The Tournament Read Online Free PDF Page A

father’s family had many distant relatives in these parts and it was their hospitality that we enjoyed. (It did not escape my notice that in France, where my father was supposedly king, we had moved with stealth and caution, while in the Germanic regions, where he held no such title, we travelled openly and freely.)
    We stayed in grand country houses and sometimes in castles perched on hilltops, and we ate according to our station once again: roasted venison, manchet, red deer pasties and some of the most delightful gingerbreads. To the evident disapproval of our chaperones, on one occasion Mr Ascham and Mr Giles partook of Rhenish, a strong German wine (and I know that Elsie managed to quickly quaff a glass of the stuff, too). All three of them complained of stinging headaches the next morning. The pious Ponsonbys drank only pear cider and suffered no such ills.
    The further eastward we travelled, however, the more we stayed at the taverns and Bierhallen found in the mining towns of Bavaria. Here Mr Giles would play chess against talented locals while we observed or ate.
    I watched these games keenly, utterly enthralled, while Mrs Ponsonby knitted calmly by my side, outwardly uninterested but in truth, ever watchful.
    Elsie, on the other hand—and it must be said, she was quite easily bored—would sometimes watch, but more often she would disappear to our rooms or to some other place I knew not where. And just as Elsie didn’t care for Mrs Ponsonby, Mrs Ponsonby didn’t care about Elsie: ‘My job is to watch over you and you alone, Elizabeth,’ she said to me once. ‘I leave it to our good Lord to save the soul of that little slut.’
    In any case, I thoroughly enjoyed watching Mr Giles play. He was a most inventive and clever player.
    Some evenings, he would give me lessons in chess. Like many inexperienced players, I was always using my queen to carve great swathes through his pieces, but then he would invariably take my rampaging lady with a knight I had not seen coming. Many times he would take her after checking my king with that same knight, a move he called a fork .
    ‘The knight is the queen’s greatest enemy,’ he told me at one tavern, ‘for while the queen can replicate every other piece’s moves, she cannot mimic the knight’s leaps. Thus, whenever you move your queen, always keep an eye out for a knight’s fork. Never let her land on a square that will allow an enemy knight to take her and your king at once. It is the amateur player’s greatest mistake.’
    After watching him play many games, I began to notice that Mr Giles used two kinds of openings, rarely deviating from them. When I asked my teacher why this was so, he explained that Mr Giles was ‘controlling the centre of the board’ and ‘providing a foundation for later attacks’. I just liked taking pieces.
    When he played with me, Mr Giles would often say, ‘Now, Bess, in chess, never play the pieces, play your opponent. Watch his eyes, watch for the moments when he blinks excessively, or when he holds his breath: for those are the times when your foe is planning something. Likewise, control your own expressions, because in life as in chess, your face can betray your intentions.’ As he said this, he gave me a meaningful look: ‘This is especially important for queens and princesses.’
    He smiled. I smiled back. I liked Mr Giles.
    Mr Giles also laid fiendish traps for his opponents and, again, after watching him play many times, I began to see when he laid them. On those occasions, I would wait tensely for him to spring his trap (and true to his own dictum, he never let his facial expression give away his intentions).
    His chief trap occurred when his opponent castled. On seeing this, Mr Giles would casually position his queen in front of one of his bishops and wait for his moment.
    Then just when his opponent thought the game was moving on to a new phase, Mr Giles would strike like a cobra. His queen would rush diagonally across