The Tournament of Blood Read online

  ‘I don’t have time,’ she protested.

  ‘I order it,’ he said simply.

  ‘My Lord,’ she said, surrendering happily.

  Their solar was at the other side of the hall, and they walked through it to their private chambers. There a man was sweeping away old rushes.

  ‘Out!’ Sir Walter snapped and the man fled while the knight untied his hose and pulled off his shirt.

  Helen watched him while she slowly removed her skirts and tunic. In every way he was a good husband to her, kindly and generous, and a master in the tournament. They had been married three years now, and she had never yet seen him bested.

  ‘Hurry, woman! I’ll burn with lust else!’ he grumbled. He was already on their bed, the blankets pulled back, and now he took hold of her and pulled her towards him.

  It was a wonderful body, he thought, holding her at arm’s length a moment while he felt his ardour mount. Long in the leg, slim in the waist, she had a flowing mane of red-gold hair framing a finely sculpted face with small nose, high cheekbones and slanted green eyes.

  Sensing his impatience, she quickly climbed atop of him, kissing and stroking to ensure his pleasure. It was her duty. She knew that he would suspect her of adultery if she ever rejected his demands, and his response would be swift and uncompromising. She made love with a silent passion until he spent, and then worked a little longer, more slowly, until she gasped and fell onto his chest, her breathing gradually calming.

  His chest was damp with their sweat. She kissed it, then rested her cheek on his shoulder, twining her fingers in the thick hair of his breast. ‘You’re confident of winning?’

  Glancing down at her, his voice registered his surprise. ‘Do you have any doubt?’

  ‘I have never seen you lose.’

  ‘Yes, I will win. I have the horse, I have the equipment, and I know I have the most virtuous Lady to egg me on.’

  ‘After that display? You can still think me virtuous?’

  ‘For a woman, yes. Yes, I would say you are honourable enough,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t dare to be otherwise, would you?’ He gave a low chuckle as he rolled her onto her back and climbed between her thighs.

  Only when he had exhausted himself and could lie back with his hand on her belly did his mind return to the tournament. Sighing contentedly, he allowed himself to consider the thrill of riding once more against another man.

  It was rather like this taking of a woman, he thought. There was a similar tingle to the blood, a similar clutch at the belly, a heightened awareness of life. And the delight as an opponent fell was similar to the pleasure when a woman surrendered herself. Both were exquisite, wonderful experiences. Different, but similar in some way.

  He had never lost in the lists. He couldn’t. He would take on any odds to win because within him he knew he harboured a strain of explosive cruel violence that exceeded the fabled madness of a berserker. When his blood was up, his rage was like a red mist which encompassed his entire being, and he could throw himself into combat without a thought for his own safety, beating at his opponent with a wholehearted ferocity that terrified any who stood before him.

  It even shocked him sometimes. Like when he had almost killed Sir Richard Prouse six years ago at Crukerne. Not that it was his fault. Anyone could fly off the handle in a mêlée; he wasn’t the first. It was nothing to be ashamed of. Especially in a battle. The ransom had been paid in full, which was what mattered. More business for that usurer Benjamin, no doubt.

  The memory of Dudenay brought a scowl to his features. Tight fisted bastard son of a Parisian peasant’s poxed dog! His charges for the armour had been extortionate. It was all Sir Walter could manage not to put his hands about the money-man’s throat when he had demanded his interest. Never again, thank God! Not now the creature was dead.

  Baldwin felt his wife’s grip tighten as the contractions returned, her breathing changing until she was almost panting while her fingers dug into his forearm, making him wince. Gradually her breathing recovered and Baldwin blew out his cheeks in relief as her fingers released him.

  She looked up at him, her hair clinging damply to her forehead, her face pale and weakly. ‘I feel so cold now. As the contractions get me, I burn, but as soon as they pass I freeze.’

  Wary after her earlier outburst, Baldwin ventured nervously, ‘Um . . . should I put a log on the fire?’

  ‘My winter cloak would be easier. Then I can throw it off when I’m hot again.’

  He went to the chest and pulled out a heavy woollen cloak lined with warm squirrel fur, draping it about her.

  She touched his hand. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How much longer will this go on?’ he asked quietly.

  She looked up at his wretched expression, and rested her hand on his, smiling up at him. This was a new experience for her, a strange, overwhelming experience, but it felt oddly natural. There was no fear for her, no terror, although she was aware of the risks: she had seen other women die in childbirth, especially when the delivery took too long. That was something that didn’t worry her. At a fresh sensation her attention turned inwards again.

  ‘I can feel the baby,’ she said softly. ‘It’s moving . . . dropping downwards.’

  His face relaxed slightly, but she could still see his anguish. In his eyes she could see his concern, his fear for her. She reached up and pulled his head down to her, kissing him. As the next wave of pain mounted she let him loose. ‘You can’t do anything here, Baldwin. Go! Leave Petronilla with me and we will call you when all is done.’

  He was tempted to argue, but then he saw the cramping begin to distort her features again, and he rose quickly, calling for Petronilla.

  Chapter Six

  The man called Philip Tyrel was in a lousy mood when he walked into the field. Later than he had intended, tired from his long journey from Exeter to Oakhampton, all he really wanted was a comfortable bed and pot of cool ale to soothe his exhausted limbs, but he must first put up his small tent, see to his horse and prepare for the jousting.

  It took less time than he had feared. Soon he repaired to the market and once he had a quart of ale inside him with a beef pie to keep it company, he began to feel more human, but his feeling of glumness remained.

  His tiredness wasn’t caused solely by the journey to get here. This lassitude was a manifestation of his decay. All creatures died sooner or later, their bodies rotting until only the bones remained, but for his part he knew he had begun to die on the day he had seen his wife crushed to death. He craved the peace of the grave. It was so long since he had known comfort or true rest, and his spirit was flagging.

  After killing Benjamin he had felt so good it was as though a rush of fresh vigour had sunk into his very marrow, as if he had found himself, miraculously, ten years younger. He could almost think that some form of energy had been absorbed by him from the man whom he had killed. An alchemist he had once spoken to in Rome had hinted of an emanation given off by living beings, something that only occultists and the trained knew of, and it was from this, he had said, that the secret of eternal life could be determined – but the fellow had been drunk, and his discourse soon sank into incoherent rambling.

  Perhaps it was not so fanciful a concept. He had heard that a man who took the life of another gained a little of the dead man’s power, and that was certainly his own experience. His sight had never been so clear, his limbs so strong, his hearing so acute as after Benjamin’s execution. His very soul felt invigorated.

  Could it be that when a man ended another’s life, this was always the result? he wondered. If so, any killer must kill again, for no one would be able to resist the addictive temptation to repeat the experience. If a man enjoyed such a sense of revitalisation after killing and subsequently found himself like this, enfeebled once more as his body continued its journey to the grave, there must be a constant urge to kill afresh and renew oneself.

  But no power on earth could renew his life. Since the terrible day sixteen long y
ears ago, when his wife and two young children had been taken from him, he had travelled regularly. Battles, tournaments, quests, he had thrown himself into them all hoping to win some ease, and if not, death. Except he had failed. He had gained a certain renown, but it had not helped. His grief was too deeply ingrained in him. He knew that only death could excise the pain.

  As his thoughts grew gloomy, the crowds made him claustrophobic. He turned away from the people and walked quietly to the river, standing near a great oak and gazing at the rippling waters. A lick of sunlight caught the back of his neck like a soft kiss, and he smiled sadly, recalling that last kiss on that last day. If only he had remained with them. It would have been good to have died at the same time.

  He sighed and threw a stone into the waters.

  Benjamin’s death was not the same. The man had broken God’s laws: committing usury and causing deaths. If he was any other man, if he was a peasant and had been responsible for so many deaths, he would have been executed. But no, his crimes were ignored because he was wealthy. At least he had finally paid the price of his unbearable greed. Perhaps that was the reason for the sudden burst of dynamism that flooded Philip after the event – it was God’s way of rewarding him, to show that Benjamin had deserved his fate. Revenge was justifiable.

  If the banker had only been guilty of usury, Philip would have been able to forgive him, but that wasn’t his sole crime. In his insatiable hunger for money, he had maximised his profits with his accomplices by skimping on the wood they had acquired to build the ber frois, the grandstands, at the tournament at Exeter in 1306. Benjamin had been a member of a trio consisting of a builder, an architect and himself as financier, who helped set out tournament fields, to construct the stands, the barriers, weapon rests and so on. Benjamin paid suppliers for the materials, working to a budget which the tournament organiser agreed with him, and if he and his friends scrimped and saved on materials, they could pocket the difference.

  That was why Benjamin’s stands had collapsed, why Benjamin had to die. Because he had charged for the best timbers but had used the cheapest, and when people filled the stand, the stand fell.

  Now Benjamin too was dead, punished for his greed.

  Not that it would bring back those who had died; nor could it renew the ruined lives of the survivors. Philip wiped away the tear that smeared his sight, and with an effort smothered his emotions before they could overwhelm him. He had work to do.

  Walking back the way he had come, he continued beyond the armourers towards the field. There, he cast a professional eye over the stands, nodding at the size and siting. All looked well enough at first glance, but then he caught sight of a rotten board panelling a side-wall.

  He walked over and touched it; the wood felt damp, as though rot was eating into it. Such timber should never have been used. He only hoped that the boards which formed the flooring were of better quality. Putting out his hand, he touched the wood again to prove to himself that this was no figment of imagination, that his mind was not deteriorating. His every sense was heightened, and before his fingers encountered the chilly wetness he could smell the disease in the planks.

  A shiver rattled its way through his body and he was struck with a sensation of freezing, as if he had been instantaneously transferred to winter and left naked, standing in snow. Then a bird called out a shrill tune and he felt the sudden warmth thrill him as if God had chosen that moment to bestow a smile upon him.

  He couldn’t be sure, but how many carpenters were there who specialised in tournaments? Perhaps he could soon have his revenge on a second man. One who was even more directly culpable than the money-lender.

  There was one way to verify his impression. He walked to the ale-sellers and gazed upon the drinkers, but his target wasn’t there, so he returned to the battlefield and stared about him. Then he saw the carpenter. Up near a rack of lances, Philip spotted him, bent at his task and he knew he had found his second victim.

  Strolling towards the castle, Sir Baldwin felt the holiday atmosphere that pervaded the place. For a while, enjoying the sight of flowers at the hedges, the cheery cries of traders and hucksters, the teasing and ribald comments passed by men to women and returned, he could forget that the purpose of this festive occasion was a series of fights, many of which would inevitably be bloody, possibly even fatal.

  He had left his servant Edgar in charge of his cavalcade. Horses, carts and men were everywhere fighting to keep together in the crowd. Now Baldwin was in the midst of a stream of wagons and carts, with only the protection of his small riding sword. It was almost new, but he was delighted by it. The blade was a fabulous peacock blue, and inscribed upon one side was B OAC, standing for Beati Omnipotensque Angeli Christi, meaning ‘blessed and omnipotent are the angels of Christ’, while on the reverse was the small cross of the Knights Templar. The two, he felt, were charms as powerful as any prayer or scrap of paper sold by a pardoner.

  Many folk were drinking freely from skins and one man was so drunk he fell to the roadside and rolled into the river with a loud hiccup. Baldwin was concerned that he might drown, but two other travellers reached down and rescued him, one amused, the other loudly proclaiming his fury at being forced to get his best velvet coat wet to ‘save a drunken sot who’ll probably be dead in a few days anyway, and it’ll be a good thing for all of us when he does bleeding well die and stops being such a nuisance to his fellows.’

  The castle lay a half-mile or so further upriver from the town, and Baldwin studied it as he approached, eyeing the improvements.

  This was Lord Hugh’s main post on the road that led from Exeter to Cornwall, and the last time Sir Baldwin had been here, many years before, its dilapidation had been all too evident. During Lord Hugh’s minority, from 1292 to 1297, it had been maintained by the King, and although Lord Hugh had been saddened by its condition when he saw how badly it had fallen into disrepair, there had been little he could do until he came into his inheritance.

  As soon as Lord Hugh was twenty-one, he took over his estates, determined that the castle should be renovated and made fully habitable again. From what Baldwin could see, he had achieved a great deal. The timber bridge over the stream that bounded the northern walls was new, replacing the old one. That had been so rotten that many travellers had bypassed it, preferring to ford the stream farther up than put their faith in the decaying wood. Once over the stream, the road curved under the northern side of the castle, beneath the soaring new curtain wall.

  Baldwin stood at the side of the road and let other travellers pass by while he ran his eyes over the place. It had a curious design, but that was only because it was so strongly placed. Baldwin was sure that he had seen a place built to a similar design before: long and narrow, sited upon the long spur of a hill. He smiled when he pinpointed his memory: it was like Richard Coeur de Lion’s Château Gaillard, albeit on a smaller scale. Both lay on top of ridges, taking advantage of the line of the land.

  At the south-west point of Oakhampton was a keep set atop a solid mound. This had been a part of the spur, but beyond the keep the land had been dug away and used to raise the keep’s mound still higher, creating a deep and unbridgeable crevasse and making attack along the line of the spur itself all but impossible.

  In front of the keep was an almost triangular bailey, holding the hall, kitchens and chapel and main accommodation for Sir Hugh’s men. A square barbican faced the bridge, and it was connected to the main gatehouse some 100 feet behind it by a high-walled corridor which extended like a long finger of moorstone pointing at the bridge. Any attacker who succeeded in breaking down the door to the barbican would run the gauntlet of concentrated fire from above all the way along that length before he could attempt to storm the gatehouse – a suicidal mission if ever there was one, Baldwin acknowledged.

  Above the roadway the ground rose steeply to the curtain walls bounding the castle itself, and when Baldwin continued with the flow of people to the southern side of the place, he saw that the walls
here were set as high above the meadow. The castle loomed above the people meandering from tents to stalls as they surveyed the goods on display.

  Usually Oakhampton was a tranquil castle. Far enough from the town, which was itself remote at the best of times, the castle saw only occasional travellers passing along the road. From the dung that lay about so liberally, this field was normally pasture for sheep, horses and cattle. With the river flowing around in a great loop, the soil must have produced good grass for the animals even in the driest summer, and this would commonly be a pleasant, out-of-the-way place where a man could sit on a stone at the water’s edge and contemplate his life while the sunlight danced over the waters. Or so Baldwin assumed, for today it was a scene of lunatic mayhem.

  Men milled about and bellowed at each other. Here, at the foot of the barbican, nearer the river, there was a set of horse-lines, but the main part of the field was now a tended area with gaily coloured pavilions, flags fluttering in the breeze. Squires and heralds set out the carefully painted shields of their masters so that others could challenge them, while spectators strolled idly by, confirming who was present. The sight made Baldwin want to groan. He knew that his own tent would soon be erected, a damp and chill home for a week.

  Eventually he came to a second field which was dedicated to a market. It was filled with small sheds and wagons where local folk had set up stalls. Food, ale and wine were in plentiful supply, but so were bolts of cloth, jewels and trinkets, because wherever knights met to tourney, their women would be close at hand to egg them on, and even if they weren’t, knights were among the vainest of men, forever seeking fashionable or expensive cloth to proclaim their richness. It was natural for merchants to try to sell gold, silver and silks at a tournament, just as it was natural that the usurers and money-lenders would also be on hand. They too had their place.

  Beyond this was a third field, and it was here that Baldwin saw his friend.