The Red Knight

Far to the east he saw the barest smudge of orange, and it instantly recalled him to his duty. ‘I must go,’ he said. He wanted to impress her – he wanted not to seem to need to impress her. ‘I’ve sent people to do something I should have done myself,’ he blurted.

She didn’t seem to pay him any heed. ‘I thought that you needed to know what the stakes were,’ she said. ‘I don’t think she is going to tell you. This is a place of power. And the Masters of our Order have filled it with women of power, and with powerful artefacts. Now it shines like a beacon.

He felt blind and foolish at her words. But Prudentia’s rules – on the use of power, on using the sight of power – which were wisdom in a world that distrusted the magi, had deprived him of this insight.

‘That, or she meant me to tell you,’ Amicia added. Her head slumped for the first time that evening.

‘Or she expected me to reason it out for myself,’ he said bitterly. He felt the time flowing away as if he had an hourglass in his hand – he felt tonight’s raid slipping west into the trees, and he felt the lack of alertness on his watch, and sensed a thousand forgotten details, like a tendril of power attached to his soldiers that was pulling him from her side. And the glow far in the east – what was that?

And then he felt her, and it was like a chain that tethered him to the bench.

‘I must go,’ he said again. But youth, and his hand, betrayed him, and he was again in her arms or she in his.

‘I do not want this,’ she said as she kissed him again.

So he broke free. Broke the binding between them with a thought, and stepped away. ‘Do you often come here?’ he asked, his voice hoarse. ‘To the tree?’

She nodded, barely perceptible in the odd light.

‘I might write to you,’ he said. ‘I want to see you again.’

She smiled. ‘I imagine you’ll see me every day,’ she said. ‘I don’t want this. I don’t need it. You don’t know me. We should walk away.’

‘If I strike you now we can end as we started,’ he said. ‘With a kiss and a blow. But you want me as I want you. We are bonded.’

She shook her head. ‘That sort of thing is for children. Listen, Captain. I have been a wife. I know how a man feels between my legs. Ah! You wince. The novice is not a virgin. Shall I go on? I lived across the wall. I was an Outwaller. No, look!’ She peeled back the collar of her gown, and her shoulder was covered in tattoos.

Bathed in the distant firelight her shoulder gleamed, and all he felt was desire.

‘I was taken young, and grew to womanhood among them. I had a husband – a warrior, and we might have grown old together, he as war chief and I the shaman. Until the Knights of the Order came. They killed him, they took me, and here I am. And I do not need rescuing. I live in the world of spirit. I have come to love Jesus. Every time I kiss you, I hurtle backwards in my life to another place. I cannot be with you. I will not be a mercenary’s whore. I sacrificed myself this evening so that you could see what you are so obviously blind to – because you are so very afraid of your power.’ She turned her head. ‘Now go.’

The lines of power to his soldiers were taut as cables. He was ignoring his duty. It was like a broken bone – a scream of pain. But he couldn’t let what was between them rest.

‘You wanted me as much as ever I wanted you, from the moment your eyes met mine. Don’t be a hypocrite. You sacrificed yourself this evening? Rather, you craved this evening and built yourself a reason to let yourself have it.’ Even as he spoke the words, he cursed himself for a fool. It was not what he wanted to say.

‘You have no idea what I do or do not want,’ she said. ‘You have no idea the life I have led.’

He took a half-step away – the sort of half-step a swordsman takes when he changes from defence to attack. ‘I grew up with five brothers who hated me, a father who ignored and despised me, and a doting mother who wanted to make me a tool of her revenge,’ he hissed. ‘I grew up across the river from your Outwaller villages. When I looked out of my tower I saw you Outwallers in the land of freedom. You had a husband who loved you? I had a succession of sweethearts placed in my bed by my mother to spy on me. You would have been an Outwaller shaman? I was being trained to lead armies of the Wild to crush Alba and rid the earth of the king. So that my mother could feel avenged. Knights of the Order came for you? My brothers ganged up to beat me, to please my supposed father. It was good fun.’ He found that his voice was rising and spittle flew from his mouth.

So much for self-control; he had said too much. Far too much. He felt sick.

But he was not done. ‘But fuck that. I am not the Antichrist, even if God himself decrees I should be. I will be what I will, not what anyone else wills, as can you. Be what you choose. You love Jesus?’ he asked, and something black passed into his mind. ‘What has he done for you? Love me instead.’

‘I will not,’ she said, quite calmly.

He didn’t will himself to walk away. He didn’t feel a thing – he didn’t feel an urge to reply. It was like being cut with a very sharp sword, and watching your arm fall to the ground.

The next he knew, he was standing in the guard box over the gate.

Bent, the duty archer, stood with his arms crossed. When he saw the captain he twirled his moustaches. ‘You’ve sent out a sortie,’ he said. ‘Or somewhat similar. I can’t find Bad Tom or half the men-at-arms for duty.’

‘It’s about to happen,’ the captain said, mastering himself. ‘Tell the watch to be alert. Tell them-’

He looked up. But the stars were silent and cold.

‘Tell them to be alert,’ he said, at a loss. ‘I have to attend the Abbess.’

He got himself to the jakes and threw up. Wiped his chin on an old handkerchief and threw it after his puke, which would have scandalized a laundress. And then he pulled himself up straight, nodded, as if to an invisible companion, and walked back into the hall.

The Abbess was waiting for him.

‘You met with my handmaiden,’ she said.

His armour was adamantine. He smiled. ‘A merry meeting,’ he said.

‘And you saw to your guards,’ she said.

‘Not enough,’ he said. ‘Lady, there are too many secrets here. I do not know what the stakes are. And perhaps I am simply too young for this.’ He shrugged. ‘But we have two foes – the enemy outside and the enemy within. I wish you would tell me what you know.’

‘If I told you everything I knew you would scourge me with whips of fire,’ said the Abbess. ‘It is a passage in the Bible on which I often ponder.’ She rose from her throne and crossed the hall to the book. ‘You have solved this riddle?’ she asked.

‘Using the enormous hints provided,’ he answered.

‘It was not my place to tell you,’ she said. ‘When our kind swear oaths, those oaths bind our power.’

He nodded.

‘You are as tense as a bowstring,’ she said. ‘Is that the effect of Amicia?’

‘I have played a trump card tonight,’ he admitted. ‘And I let my tryst interfere with duty. Things are not done as I would like on an evening when I have taken a gamble that now seems reckless.’ He paused, and said what he had boiling inside him. ‘I do not enjoy being toyed with.’

The Abbess picked up her onyx rosary and adjusted her wimple. She shrugged. ‘No one does,’ she said dismissively. ‘I don’t deal in the imagery of gambling,’ she said. ‘But perhaps we can do some good, and by our presence prevent the dicing and the deflowering you were worried about,’ she said. ‘Let’s walk among our people, Captain.’

They walked out, and she put a hand on his arm, very much the lady, and a veiled sister came and carried her train, which was longer and more ornate than any other sister’s in the convent. Indeed, the captain suspected that her habit was far from the rule as laid down for sisters of Saint Thomas. She was a rich and powerful woman who had somehow turned to this life.

When they entered the courtyard all conversation stopped. A ring of dancers moved to the sound of a pair of pipes and a psalter played by none other than the captain’s squire. The musicians continued to play, and the dancers paused, but the Abbess gave them a firm nod of approval and the dancing continued.

‘When will they come at us?’ the Abbess asked quietly.

‘Never, if I have my way,’ the captain said pleasantly.

‘It’s better to make your money without fighting?’ she asked.