The Ill-Made Knight Read Online Free PDF

some men say the greatest knight of all time.
    You know of him, messieurs, I’m sure. Well, I will have more to say of that noble gentleman.
    The other man knight was as young as me, or Nan, but he wore the whole value of my master’s shop on his back. The first silk arming jacket I ever saw, with silk cords pointed in figured gold – and this a garment meant to be worn under armour and unseen.
    Nan was the only woman in the tent, and she received a great deal of attention, and I tried not to be angry or jealous. I was so busy hanging on de Charny’s every word that I scarcely noticed her. But young men are fools, and she blushed and smiled a great deal, and eventually came and stood by me, and Messire de Charny told her that she was very beautiful. She still tells that story, and well she might. He asked her for a lace from her sleeve, and promised to wear it the next time he fought.
    I admired him so much that I restrained my jealousy and managed to smile.
    We had too much wine, and on the way home we found a lane and we dallied. She had never been so willing – grown men know about women and wine, but young ones don’t know yet. She was liquorice, and I was hot for her. Her mouth tasted of cloves. We played long, but we stayed just inside the bounds, so to speak.
    I took her to her door, begged her mother’s forgiveness for the hour and escaped alive. Just.
    So when I came home to my uncle’s house, I thought I was safe and whole, relatively sinless.
    He was raping my sister. She was crying – whimpering and pleading. I could hear them from the back door, and all the while I climbed the stairs I knew he had her and was using her, and that as a knight, I had failed, because I had not been there to protect her. Climbing those stairs still comes to me in nightmares. Up and up the endless, narrow, rickety stair, my sister begging him to stop, the sound of his fist striking her, the wet sound as he moved inside her.
    Eventually I made the top. We lived in the attic, under the eaves, and he had her on my pallet. I went for him. I wasn’t ten years old any more, and he never trained to arms.
    I’ll make this brief – you all want to hear about Poitiers.
    I beat him badly.
    I dragged him off her, and locked one of his arms behind his back, using it to hold him, then I smashed his face with my fists until I broke his nose. As he fell to the floor, arse in the air, I kicked him. I made his member black by kicking him there fifteen or twenty times.
    The next day, he stayed abed. I had to mind his shop, and I sent a boy round to my true master and said my uncle was sick. It was evil fate riding me hard.
    The French knight Geoffrey de Charny – the one who had fought so well the day before – came to the shop. The younger knight was with him. De Charny had a dagger, a fine thing, all steel – steel rondels, steel grip, steel blade – and better than anything I’d seen in London. It was a wicked, deadly thing that shouted murder across the room. He laid it on the counter and asked how much it would cost to put it in a gold-mounted scabbard.
    After I named a price, he looked down his nose at me. In French, he asked me if he hadn’t seen me at the passage of arms the day before.
    I spoke French well, or so I thought until I went to France, so I nodded and bowed and said that yes, I had been present.
    He pursed his lips. ‘With the very handsome woman, yes?’ he asked. He looked at the younger knight, who grinned.
    I nodded. I didn’t like that grin.
    ‘And the English knight, Sir Edward, is your cousin?’ he asked.
    ‘Yes, my lord,’ I said.
    ‘But you are in a dirty trade. Your hands are not clean.’ He made a face. ‘Why do you betray your blood like this?’
    Perhaps my anger showed in my eyes, but he shrugged. ‘You English,’ he said. ‘I have insulted you, and truly, I mean no insult. You look like a healthy boy who would not be useless in arms. Why not turn your back on this dirt and do something