The Tournament of Blood aktm-11 Read online

  ‘And how are Margaret and Peterkin?’

  ‘They are fine. Meg’s perfectly used to podding. I left her to it,’ Simon said absently, then he appeared to recall the man at his side. ‘Oh, Sir Baldwin, this is Hal Sachevyll, who is designing the ber frois and setting out the space for fighting.’

  Baldwin gazed at him blankly. ‘The ber frois aren’t ready?’

  ‘No,’ Sachevyll snapped. ‘It’s ridiculous. We’ve got the main frames up in place, but we need fresh timber for the flooring. The stuff we’ve been given is useless. Soggy, rotten and feeble.’

  ‘The wood’s shite,’ the carpenter asserted. ‘I wouldn’t stand on those planks. They’re rotten.’

  ‘It’s an outrage, Bailiff,’ Hal Sachevyll declared passionately. ‘All the timbers are of poor quality and there’s scarcely enough, in any case. I demand that the town provides more.’

  ‘We’ve been through this already, Hal,’ Simon said shortly. ‘If you want more timber, you’ll have to pay for it.’

  ‘I have paid! The stuff delivered is just not good enough, is it, Wymond?’ He appealed to the carpenter, who spat at Simon’s feet.

  Simon looked at him coldly. ‘Then buy more. You have been given a good sum of money to make the tournament work, haven’t you? Use it.’

  ‘What, waste more of Lord Hugh’s money? It may be loaned by a money-lender, but Lord Hugh will have to pay it all back sooner or la–’

  ‘You have enough to build,’ Simon said impatiently. ‘You suggested a budget, I daresay. Stick to it.’

  Hal sighed. ‘Look, Lord Hugh told me how much he wanted to pay. He agreed a budget with my banker, and Lord Hugh will settle up later. But that doesn’t mean I can go willy-nilly ordering fresh wood and–’

  ‘I repeat: you have enough funds. Use them!’

  ‘Our banker is dead, Bailiff. Murdered some weeks ago. I would pawn my own few belongings, but since you have plenty of wood here, why not give me some? It’s all Lord Hugh’s. And it’s his own villeins who shortchanged me, supplying rotten timbers when I ordered the best. You should command them to give us more for their lord’s honour.’

  ‘For the last time, I’m not going to steal from the townsfolk,’ Simon said sharply. ‘Why don’t you make the stands smaller, or have lower rails at the front? I can’t believe you really need so much wood.’

  ‘You’ve never built stands, have you, Bailiff?’ Wymond the carpenter interrupted. ‘Maybe you’d like to take my fucking hammer and show me how to do it?’

  Simon’s patience was frayed. Unused to such rudeness, he was close to losing his own temper. His features hardened, but after a moment’s effort he composed himself. ‘Well, perhaps you can show me what I fail to comprehend, Wymond.’

  ‘Yes, I too should like to see these bers frois,’ Baldwin said.

  With Wymond following, swearing, Sachevyll led them to the high walls of the stands enclosing the lists.

  Baldwin left Simon and the other two as they argued, the carpenter pointing to weaknesses and the dearth of wood while Simon shook his head and declared himself satisfied with the preparations. Instead Baldwin went to look at the layout. He was grateful that a small team of workmen were sawing and hammering because their row smothered the noise of the bickering between Simon and Sachevyll.

  The area was large. There would be space for at least fifty knights to contest within its fencing, first with horses, then on foot. Baldwin had seen many tournaments, and this seemed to have been set out with skill. The space between the ber frois was adequate, there was plentiful land for the horses to build up their speed, and the stands were a good size for all the men and women who would want to come and watch the spectacle.

  It would be interesting to see a tournament again, he thought. He had practised regularly while a Knight Templar and had fought in the lists, both in individual clashes with lance on shields, and in the mêlée where everyone wielded their favourite weapon after the initial brutal, thundering collision, but now he was approaching fifty years of age he was happy that younger bones and muscles should have their turn.

  He heard the voices behind him as the others approached. Hal was talking. ‘And just look at this! I’ve never seen such shoddy lumber! My heavens, I shudder to think what Lord Hugh will think when he sees it. It’s an embarrassment, that’s what it is.’

  ‘If it’s the best–’

  ‘Don’t fucking tell me it’s the best they can do,’ Wymond rasped. When Baldwin turned to glance at them, he saw that the carpenter was right before Simon and pointing with a furious finger.

  The Bailiff’s voice was curt but controlled. ‘Perhaps it would be better if you could get on with the ber frois.’

  ‘I don’t want to be associated with–’

  ‘You already are, Master Carpenter, so I suggest you get on with it.’

  ‘Not without better wood.’

  ‘Christ Jesus, give me strength!’ Simon cried heavenwards. ‘Wymond, get back to your work, and if you need more, petition your friend Hal here.’

  ‘You’ll have a disaster. It’s happened before, a long time ago, at Exeter,’ Sachevyll said, panicking. ‘You’ll have a collapse and then where will we all be?’

  ‘In the shit,’ Wymond spat.

  ‘What happened at Exeter?’ Baldwin asked.

  ‘A knight was killed and the crowd was angry. He was a well-liked fellow and the mob wanted the blood of his killer. They all moved forward, and the barrier gave way before the press, letting people tumble out. Women were smothered beneath the bodies, Sir Baldwin. Women and children, all crushed. It’ll happen here if the Bailiff remains obdurate. I warn you now: if you don’t get me new wood, I won’t be responsible.’

  ‘Lord Hugh advanced you sufficient funds to buy decent wood. If you skimped in order to line your own pockets, you’ll have to buy more. No matter what, the safety aspect is entirely your responsibility!’

  ‘If anything goes wrong, I’ll blame you,’ the carpenter stated. ‘It’s not my fault if the thing’s unsafe.’

  ‘Yes, it is,’ Simon insisted. ‘It’s the responsibility of you both to make the stands safe.’

  ‘I don’t see what I’m supposed to do with this crap. If there was some decent timber it’d be different, but–’

  Simon cut through the carpenter’s grumbling monotone. ‘God’s teeth! Just get back to your work, you lazy, whining whoreson, or I’ll have the Lord Hugh’s Bailiff arrest you as soon as he arrives.’

  ‘You can’t do that without a reason,’ the carpenter sneered and was about to add something to his words when Simon took a short step forward. Immediately Wymond drew his hammer and hefted it menacingly. ‘You want to attack me, eh? You want some of this?’

  ‘Put that thing down, you misbegotten shit of a Plymouth alewife!’ Simon roared.

  ‘Make me!’

  Baldwin stepped between the two. ‘Simon, there is no point in fighting. He’s beneath you.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ the carpenter screeched, enraged. ‘I’ll have his fucking head off, and we’ll see who’s beneath who, then, eh?’

  Baldwin said nothing, but his hand went to his sword.

  Hal put a hand on the carpenter’s arm. ‘Come on, dear,’ he soothed. ‘He’s not worth it.’

  ‘Try anything and you will be arrested,’ Baldwin said flatly.

  ‘Come now, Bailiff – squabbling with the hired help?’

  Hearing the amused, laconic tone, Simon tensed. While they had been arguing, the King Herald, Mark Tyler, had lounged over. He stood watching their argument with ill-concealed distaste, like a nobleman who was above any such grubby disputes. Two heralds stood with him, both looking on with frank interest. Baldwin recognised one as Odo, the messenger who had given him his invitation. Odo was wincing as though pained by the King Herald’s tone.

  Simon privately considered Lord Hugh’s King Herald to be a fat, obnoxious fool. Tyler had an easy time of it; he took over when all the hard work was done. And what then? Maybe h
e’d adjudicate occasionally, sing a few songs, praise some knights for their courage, and then retire to a tavern or Lord Hugh’s bar with some cronies while other men did all the serious work.

  The dark-haired man, with the double chin and expanding paunch beneath his multi-coloured tabard covered with Lord Hugh’s insignia, wore an expression of resignation, as if he had expected no better of Simon than that he should quarrel publicly with a carpenter. It made Simon realise what a spectacle he was making of himself and the thought that he had done so before the King Herald made him recover his poise instantly.

  ‘Touch me, and you’ll be arrested or dead in a moment,’ he said to the carpenter. ‘Get back to your work or I shall demand the King Herald arrests you in Lord Hugh’s name.’

  Seeing a mutinous light in the carpenter’s eyes, Baldwin pulled an inch or two of his sword blade from the scabbard, but Wymond had stood his ground long enough. He hawked and spat and lumbered away.

  Sachevyll threw his hands in the air.

  ‘This is wonderful! Quite astonishing! You realise you’re going to ruin the whole show? Now you’ve upset my friend, what’s next? I ask you, can we possibly get things completed if you molest my people? What Lord Hugh will have to say when he sees all this mess, I shudder to think. You need to find more wood, Bailiff, because otherwise I refuse to accept any responsibility. I’ll tell Lord Hugh whose fault it was when he comes storming over the place. And I’ll tell him I warned you the stands are dangerous, that they might collapse. The ber frois could be filled with his friends and their women – you want to see Lord Hugh’s friends falling and breaking their legs and arms, even dying?’

  ‘Master Sachevyll,’ Simon said with an icy calmness, ‘you are quite right to be concerned. You are Lord Hugh’s servant, while I, a humble bailiff, am a servant of Abbot Champeaux. I have nothing to answer to Lord Hugh about. I owe him no homage, I seek no patronage.’

  ‘You are as much Lord Hugh’s man as I am, myself. We both take his money to make this tournament work.’

  ‘No, I do not take his money. I am no mercenary. I repeat, I am Bailiff to Abbot Champeaux, an officer. I take nothing from Lord Hugh. If you have concerns, raise them with your lord. For my part, I have other business to attend to.’

  ‘You can’t leave me here! You have to help me find more wood!’

  ‘Get your own damned wood, you feeble-minded sodomite! I’ve been trying to help you all this long day, but now I’ve had enough. You were given the money to buy whatever you needed, but you’ve bought rubbish. Either buy more or make do. Either way, leave me in peace. I have a tournament to organise.’

  ‘Where can I go?’ Sachevyll wailed.

  ‘To hell and back – I don’t give a shit, so long as it’s far from me,’ Simon ground out unsympathetically and turned on his heel.

  Chapter Seven

  Sachevyll was close to tears as the Bailiff walked away. He could have screamed with frustration, but that wouldn’t get things sorted, and that was what Hal Sachevyll was going to do: get this event successfully completed in the manner which Lord Hugh would expect.

  But he couldn’t achieve anything in this mood. First he must calm down. That was what dear Wymond had told him, that he must calm down. He’d be no use to man nor beast if he didn’t, and there was so much to plan, so much to organise still. Hal had every intention of succeeding – with or without the Bailiff’s assistance. And afterwards he could point out to the Lord just how unhelpful – indeed obstructive – this nasty fellow Puttock had been. That thought was soothing. It needed to be developed. The idea of shaming the Bailiff before Lord Hugh was most attractive, but Hal hankered after more dramatic detail: perhaps the Bailiff would beg him for forgiveness, and Hal would spurn him, averting his head from the pitiful creature even as Lord Hugh demanded an explanation and apology for his rudeness and lack of respect to Hal.

  Feeling much better now, Hal set off towards the tented market and bought himself a pint of good quality red wine. About to sit down, he changed his mind as a boisterous tipsy youth joined him on his bench. Instead Hal took his wine and walked to the riverside, where he sat on a fallen trunk.

  Coming from a city (he had been born in London) Sachevyll viewed these rustic villeins with contempt and mistrust. Peasants were all the same. The Bailiff was clearly of the same stock: untutored, no doubt, mean and unpleasant. A man of taste and courtesy would have treated Hal with more respect. After all, he was the leading designer of lists and stands in the country, not some peasant begging alms at a lord’s door.

  He would have to acquire more wood. The stuff he had bought was not up to the standard, and he’d have to get more. That would cut into his profits, and his master carpenter’s, too. Silly Wymond, making the Bailiff angry like that when there was still a chance he might agree to let them have wood from the castle’s own stocks or something. That had been their plan – to buy cheaper quality in the expectation that Simon would cave in and give them better material. It had worked before. But Wymond had seen how annoyed Hal was growing. Heyho! Now they’d had to buy more themselves with the money they had saved from the job. There were few enough perks to jobs like this one, but taking the money and buying fewer planks or beams than necessary, or getting only cheap stuff which wasn’t worth half the amount paid, was one way of making profit. It was all accepted and understood, a means by which talent could be rewarded, like the dairyman who carefully warmed cream and took off a few clotted lumps for his own breakfast; except now it looked as though Hal was going to have to use the money he had skimmed from the deal.

  Still, if he could find a cheap supplier, he could come out of it all right – and meanwhile make sure that Lord Hugh knew exactly how unpleasant that Bailiff had been.

  Hal was still nervous that the project might be late. The job had progressed alarmingly sluggishly. It was his duty to see to the layout and design of the field, but also to ensure that everything happened on time. Of course his budget was nowhere near adequate. If only he had been given more money to play with, he could have worked wonders.

  Sipping his wine, Sachevyll allowed himself to daydream, recalling the plans he had formed when Lord Hugh first asked him to help. In his mind it would have been a gorgeous display: red silks forming a canopy over the Lord’s own grandstand, with a throne of wood upholstered with crimson velvet and cushions. Sachevyll had thought instantly of the chivalrous stories of Arthur when Lord Hugh suggested that he might like to help. He envisioned his employer dressing as a king, perhaps wearing cloth of gold and an ermine-trimmed robe, while his knights took on the rôles of Arthurian characters, acting out their parts at the Round Table before all joined in a splendid clash of steel.

  That Bailiff could be the evil Mordred, he snickered, his eye drawn once more to the stands.

  But no. The King had banned all showy tournaments since the alliance formed to destroy his favourite Piers Gaveston in 1312, and it would be tempting fate, let alone the King’s patience, to pretend to be Arthur, to wear a crown and show off his knights as men from the legends. The King would turn a blind eye to a simple tournament with few knights and no other magnates, intended purely to exercise steeds and men together in order to ensure their skill for the better defence of the realm, but it would be very different were Lord Hugh to put himself forward as a king – and not just any king, but England’s greatest. People might consider that Lord Hugh was getting ideas above his station, and if other magnates were invited, King Edward II would be a fool not to wonder whether plots against him were being hatched. It had happened before.

  No, the tournament must have the workaday appearance of simple martial practice. It was terrible, of course, for the spectacle was all there, ready, in Hal Sachevyll’s mind, but at least he was working on a tournament again, and that was all that really mattered. He loved them, even after the disaster at Exeter so many years ago.

  He hadn’t been entirely responsible, of course. There was little doubt in his mind that the crowds moving forwar
d had brought about the stand’s collapse, and many of the furious people were crushed by the weight of bodies behind them before the wood had given that appalling, groaning crack and shuddered. There was a kind of silence, then. A pause. Hal had stopped and gaped. He had never heard such a sound before. From somewhere a bird called. And then the dust was hurled into the air as the wood gave way and the screams began.

  The memory still made him feel queasy. After that he had travelled, providing smaller stages for other lords, going wherever his master had commanded. One always obeyed one’s master, Hal reminded himself. Especially when your master was the King himself.

  Recollecting that, Hal stood, fastidiously brushing lichen and mud from his hose. His master would want him listening, watching and learning, not sitting back and whining. He drained his cup and returned it to the wine-seller before squaring his shoulders, putting that scene from his mind; he gave a prim sniff and considered his next move. Perhaps he could ask the wine-seller where he might acquire some wood inexpensively.

  He was about to do so when he caught sight of Sir John of Crukerne striding through the crowds.

  ‘Oh my God!’ he squeaked, and involuntarily ducked behind the wine barrel. He didn’t want to be seen by the Butcher of Crukerne. As soon as he could, he scurried away back to Wymond and safety.

  Walking past the smugly grinning King Herald, Simon stormed away from the tournament field. He marched quickly, seething with anger at the carpenter and builder. Baldwin walked a little more slowly in his wake, leaving Simon to work off his ire.

  It was not until Simon had reached the entrance to the tented field, near the river, that he realised that his friend had lagged behind. He stopped and waited for Baldwin. ‘My apologies, that was an unnecessary outburst.’

  Baldwin shrugged. ‘The carpenter deserved worse for his lack of respect to an official. What of it?’

  ‘I’ll explain more when we find a moment’s peace,’ Simon said, his face hardening.

  Following his gaze, Baldwin saw the King Herald approaching, Odo behind him. Odo gave Baldwin a nod of recognition before going to his pavilion, a small tent near the river. He pulled off his garish tabard, marked with the symbols of Lord Hugh’s family and lineage, and Baldwin had to restrain a smile when he saw that beneath it, Odo wore a threadbare linen shirt and a pair of faded hose. Finery could conceal utter poverty, he thought.