Hard Day's Knight

  I blinked a bit stupidly. I thought there was just going to be jousting? I clung to the one thing that was vaguely familiar. “Um . . . jousting.”

  He pointed past a big building with red metal siding to a fenced field beyond. “Jousting is out in the practice field today. Tomorrow it will be in the arena. The swordplay and archery practice rings are to the left of the arena. The rings, spear work, and gauntlet are over there, by the racetrack.”

  “Thanks.” Moth, who it turned out really did like going for walks (even if it was while he was strapped into a harness), strolled along happily next to me as we made our way past a couple of practice rings, normally used for horse shows and the like, now set up with archery butts, and circles for the swordplay. Moth wanted to investigate every pile of horse poop, but I kept him on a firm line to the big fenced practice oval behind the arena.

  “There you are,” CJ said as we walked toward the small stand of wooden bleachers that sat outside the ring. The ring was empty, and the bleachers bare except for CJ. She was standing next to a box of equipment—swords, chain mail, and helmets. “I wondered where you had gotten to. You don’t have your Wench pin on! How will people know you’re a Wench without it? Honestly, Pepper, I can’t take you anywhere!”

  “How, indeed. What a great tragedy that would be. Oh, stop muttering threats; I have it right here.” I tucked Moth’s leash under my elbow as I rooted around in the small leather pouch attached to the long leather belt that hung at a rakish angle around my hips. “Here, see!” I held up the small brass pair of lips that was the official League of Wenches pin.

  “Well, put it on, silly!” I didn’t do it fast enough, because CJ grabbed the pin and affixed it to my bodice. “Do you have your favors?”

  I peered into the pouch. “Are those the little wooden sheep and bee and horse pins?”

  “Yes. You give the sheep pins to new acquaintances, the bees to any vendors who let you have free samples of their wares—honey, get it?—and the horses to any rogues and knights who catch your eye.”

  “Ah. Okay. What about these?” I pulled out a small laminated set of cards bedecked with the LOW logo and the words Entitles bearer to one free smooch from originating Wench. “What am I supposed to do with them?”

  “Give them out to people you want to kiss, stupid!” CJ rolled her eyes as a thin, small woman with shocking pink short-cropped hair strolled over. She was dressed in a knee-length forest-green leather jerkin, cream linen shirt, black leggings with green cross garters, and fringed ankle boots. Strung over her shoulder was a beautiful oak bow and a leather quiver filled with green-tipped arrows. “Hullo, CJ. Glad to see you again. Have you seen Patrick anywhere? Little rotter disappeared on me when I wanted him to mend my mail.”

  “Vandal?” CJ shook her head. “He was here, but he ran off after one of the ale girls. This is Pepper Marsh, my cousin from the States. Pepper, this is Fenice Carson. She’s part of Three Dog Knights.”

  I did a mental double take. “Huh?”

  “Three Dog Knights. It’s the name of our jousting company,” Fenice explained, offering her gauntleted hand. I shook it, wondering if someone else liked old 1970s music. “Pleasure to meet you. Nice cat. We’re performance jousters,” she added, as if that explained everything.

  “Uh . . . okay.” I looked at CJ. She sighed and tugged me over to where Moth had gone into meat-loaf mode on one of the bleacher seats.

  “There are two kinds of jousters—competition and performance,” CJ said quickly. “Most jousters you see here are performance jousters—men and women who put on scripted shows, work the Ren Faires, etcetera. The others are competitive jousters—they don’t do shows; they only compete for the purses and titles.”

  “Ah. So the competition guys are the real jousters.”

  “Real, my arse,” Fenice said, plopping down on the bench at my feet. “We train just as long and hard as the competition crowd—longer and harder, because we have to know how to unhorse someone without harming them, how to fall while wearing a full suit of armor, and how to hit marks. That lot just thinks they’re better than us.”

  I looked to where she was waving a scornful hand. Beyond the nearest stable a collection of RVs was clustered around a huge white-and-blue striped tent. Emblazoned across the top of the tent was a pennant bearing one word: Joust!

  “Farrell Kirkham and his team?” I asked.

  “They’re the worst of the lot,” Fenice said with a disgusted curl to her lip. “Think their shite don’t stink. Think they’re better than us. You know what they call us? Ground pounders. Shield taggers.”

  “Yeah, I heard him say that. What’s it mean?”

  “A jouster who can’t stay in his saddle,” CJ answered. “It’s not very nice.”

  “And not at all true. Every time we come up against the competition crowd, we clean their clocks,” Fenice added. “They’re just smug bastards because they don’t have to perform to pay for their travel or horses or gear. They have sponsors.”

  She said the word like it was dirty.

  “Ah. And your team . . . ?”

  “Three Dog Knights—so named because of Walker’s three dogs—performs at a number of fairs and schools. We also do corporate retreats. We have seven different shows,” Fenice said proudly.

  “Wow. So, you’re part of the team with Walker McPhail?”

  CJ, who had been standing on the seat next to me, peering around with a hand shading her eyes (sunglasses were verboten to Wenches unless they had a medical excuse), looked down with an odd look on her face. “How do you know Walker?”

  I grimaced and rubbed my hip. “I . . . uh . . . ran into him on the way in from the tent city. I met Farrell, too. He seemed a bit intense.” Intense was the nicest thing I could think to say about him.

  “He’s a snake in the grass,” Fenice said. “Oh, there’s Patrick. Patrick!” Fenice bellowed the name and waved her arm at a man in knight’s garb who was leaning against a fence railing and flirting with a woman holding a tray of empty beer steins. “Damn him, he’s got another Wench. . . . Patrick!”

  Fenice took off at a lope toward the duo.

  “Husband?” I asked CJ, who was back to peering around the area.

  “Hmm? Oh, no. Brother. He prefers to be called Vandal. He’s her twin brother, actually, although you wouldn’t know it. They don’t look at all alike. There he is! My lamb!” CJ pulled an embroidered triangle of cloth from her poofy chemise sleeve and waved it in the air. Across the ring, Walker—on foot this time—had opened up the gate into the ring. A man in a full suit of jousting armor (the heavy plated stuff) rode into the ring on a big piebald horse, followed by another armored man on the black horse named Marley.

  “That’s Butcher there,” CJ said excitedly, waving her cloth favor. The man on the piebald gelding lifted a hand and waved back. “Isn’t he the yummiest thing you’ve ever seen?”

  “Well . . . I can’t actually see him,” I pointed out. “He’s in full armor. All I can see is that he has to be very strong to wear all that. How much does that weigh?”

  Walker and another man with spiky blond hair entered the ring, each bearing a number of long wooden lances.

  “CJ! It’s been forever, luv.” A woman approached us from the other side, stopping to give CJ a kiss on the cheek and a big bear hug. “Is this your cousin? Hello, I’m Bliss.”

  “Pepper,” I said.

  “That your cat?” Bliss, an older woman with an ash gray pageboy, bent to pick up Moth. She was in sweats, the first person at the Faire I’d seen who wasn’t in garb, but Moth didn’t seem to mind. He gave her his patented slitty-eyed look for a few seconds, then graciously lifted his chin and allowed her to scratch his neck. “Nice puss!”

  “No, he’s not, and no, he’s not. He’s CJ’s mom’s cat. We’re stuck with him for the next two weeks.”

  “You’re stuck with him,” CJ reminded me. “Oh, good, they’re going to do the heavy-armor jousting. The plate armor weighs about thirty pounds
, Pepper. But it looks good on Butcher, don’t you think? He plays the Fearsome Black Knight.”

  “Doesn’t do as good a job at it as Walker did,” Bliss said, sitting down next to us, a contented, purring Moth in her arms. I toyed with the idea of offering her money to take over cat-watching for me, but realized the few bucks I had wouldn’t go very far in buying her off.

  “That’s because Butcher is an inherently sweet lamby-pie, and Walker is . . . well, Walker.”

  “Why isn’t he jousting now?” I asked, watching as the men in the ring set the lances along one side. The two men on horseback were walking their horses around to calm them, each keeping to one end of the oval. Down the center a long white wooden fence had been set up. I figured that must be the list, what they called the actual area the jousters used. As a dedicated reader of medieval romances, I thought it was kind of cool seeing one in person. I summoned up the memories of every medieval I’d ever read as Walker and the blond man separated, each taking a lance to one of the jousting knights.

  Bliss gave me a long look, her brown eyes almost black as she examined me. “It’s a long story,” was all she said.

  I was about to tell her I had the time to listen to it, when CJ stood up and started jumping up and down, yelling, “Go, Butcher, go! Knock him on his ass!”

  I didn’t see a starting signal, but all of a sudden the horses were thundering down the list, the two jousters swinging their lances from an upright position to a horizontal one angled above their horses’ necks, the almost ten-foot-long wooden poles bobbing up and down for a few seconds as each was aimed dead-on to the man riding toward it.

  “Oh, my god!” I gasped, sucking in my breath a moment before the lances connected. There was a great crack! as both lances struck the curved metal plate on the approaching knight’s shoulder, splinters flying off of both shattered tips. CJ’s boyfriend, Butcher, was thrown backward in his saddle by the impact, but he held on. The other man wasn’t nearly as lucky. He was flipped backward like Butcher, but unlike the bigger knight, he lost his grip on the reins, his broken lance flying over the horse’s rump as he sagged drunkenly off the right side, the animal’s momentum throwing him further off balance until he hit the ground with a tremendous crash.

  Chapter Three

  “Ouch on rye!” I winced in sympathy when the cantering horse stepped on the downed man’s leg as it continued to the end of the list where the spiky-haired man caught it. “Is that what jousting is really like? How . . . how . . . manly! Is that guy hurt? Are the lances supposed to break like that? And I thought they jousted with shields? My God, that must hurt like hell to have those lances plowing into your chest like that. Oh, look, he’s moving!”

  CJ was still jumping up and down waving her cloth favor, blowing kisses to the armored Butcher, who had ridden back to the other end of the list, tossing his broken lance into a corner. “Yay, Butcher! You’re the best, snuggle-bunny!”

  “Yes, that’s what jousting is really like,” Bliss answered, watching with amazing calmness as Walker strode over to the twitching fallen man. To my surprise, rather than calling for an aid unit or even checking him for injuries, Walker just stood over the guy, asked him a couple of questions, then hauled him to his feet. “It’s not really that manly—lots of women joust very successfully. I do. It’s all a matter of timing, you see. You can take down even the biggest opponent if you have the speed and skill to do so. It’s rather like martial arts, but on horseback.”

  “Is he all right?” I asked as the downed knight staggered sideways toward Walker. “Shouldn’t someone be doing something?”

  “Oh, trust me, Walker is,” Bliss said with laughter in her voice. “He’s letting Bos know in no uncertain terms exactly what he did wrong.”

  I stared at her for a moment with my jaw hanging down around my knees, then I pointed toward where the two men were walking toward Marley. “Walker is lecturing the guy who got hurt?”

  “Reaming him up one side and down the other,” CJ agreed as she sat back down next to us. She must have seen the appalled look on my face, because she patted my hand. “That’s his job, silly. He’s the team coach.”

  “And squire, and farrier, and groom, and stable hand, and harness cleaner, and medic, when it’s needed. The only thing Walker doesn’t do is mend the costumes, and that’s only because Bos and his partner Geoff do them,” Bliss said with a nod to the spiky-haired man who was standing next to Marley as Walker helped the knight named Bos back into the saddle.

  “That’s a big horse,” I said, distracted for a moment by the fact that Geoff’s head just barely reached Marley’s withers.

  “Seventeen hands. He’s half Percheron. Walker’s been training him the last week. Says he’s a real goer,” Bliss answered, her fingers still working their cat magic on Moth.

  “So Walker and Geoff are squires?” I asked, still trying to work it out in my mind.

  CJ shook her head while Bliss nodded.

  “They are, but everyone on the team acts as squire at one time or another,” Bliss said, attempting to explain the confusion. “We don’t have enough team members, you see. There’s just Walker, Butcher, Fenice and Vandal, Bos and Geoff, and me. Seven, not ten, but Walker doesn’t joust anymore, so it’s really six.”

  “Uh . . .” I hated to sound stupid and ask to have everything explained, but there was no help for it.

  “Most teams have ten members,” CJ said, obviously taking pity on my confusion. “Each team has to produce four jousters, four swordfighters, and two archers. All the teams but Three Dog Knights have one person for each competition, plus the support staff of grooms, squires, and varlets.”

  “We’re short, so everyone doubles in the sports, and also works as squires, etcetera,” Bliss added. “Butcher jousts and swordfights; Fenice is the best archer in northern England and is just as good with a sword; Bos jousts and is the backup swordfighter, although he’s not really very strong in either, which is why Walker has been working so hard with him. Vandal jousts and hacks away at people with a sword, and I joust and also participate in the archery contest.”

  “I had no idea women could be jousters,” I said, watching as the two men rode to opposite ends of the lists. Walker called out some instruction to Bos, but I couldn’t hear anything other than a threat to have his guts for garters if he did something foolish like he did the last time. “Wow. Walker is really mad at him, huh?”

  “He should be,” Bliss said, handing me Moth as she stood up. “Bos let his lance dip. He came close to harming Butcher’s horse. Walker was just letting him know that if he did it again, he’d be off the team.”

  “Ouch. I don’t think it’s right that a horse should be hurt, but it seems like kind of an ironic thing to be mad about when the whole point of jousting is to knock the other guy off.”

  “Do you know what they used to do to a knight who hit a horse with his lance?” Bliss asked as she stepped down over the bleachers.

  I shook my head.

  “They’d shoot him with crossbows. The first rule of any joust—performance or competition—is that if you hit a horse with a lance, you’re history. Drummed out of the jousting community. No second chance, no appeal, nothing. It’s all over.” She smiled at both me and CJ, then headed off toward the stables behind the practice ring, pausing by the rails to have a quick word with Walker.

  “Wow,” I said, watching as the men prepared to joust again.

  “I told you they loved their animals,” CJ said smugly, then stood up and yelled out encouragement to the big man in black armor.

  They ran another course, but this time I was prepared for what was going to happen. Both jousters kept their seats, although Bos lost his lance. Walker went out to both men and evidently told them what they did right and wrong. I felt a little sorry for Bos—Walker spent just a minute with Butcher, who nodded his head several times, but Bos got a lengthy lecture before Walker clapped a hand on Bos’s leg and gave Marley a pat.

  Over the course of th
e next half hour, they jousted five more times, with Butcher going over his horse’s butt once, and Bos being tossed three times. You’d think watching the same thing over and over again would be boring, but it was just the opposite. Each time the great horses jumped forward, each time the lances were leveled at the opponents’ chests, my heart jumped into my mouth.

  “Now I know why tournaments were so popular in the Middle Ages,” I said as I sat down after a particularly spectacular crash on Bos’s part, having just stood and screamed my support for him (I felt it only polite, since CJ was yelling like mad for Butcher). “This is fabulous stuff!”

  “If you think so now, you should see us in all our finery,” a smooth English voice said. “Then we’re not just fabulous; we’re spectacular. CJ, what a delight it is to see you again.” The handsome dark-haired young man named Vandal stood with one booted foot propped up on the edge of the bleacher. “You look lovely as ever. Might I hope that you have seen the error of your ways and are ready to bestow upon me your fair hand and fairer body?”

  His eyes danced wickedly as their gaze lingered first on CJ’s bodice (her bosom had distinct hemispheres, unlike my shelf of solid breast), then on mine. His eyes bugged out a bit when he got to me, but eventually he managed to drag his gaze off my shelf.

  “Not on your life, Vandal. You know my heart and all the other parts belong to Butcher,” CJ answered, blowing him a kiss nonetheless.

  He made a show of catching it and sighing dramatically. I had to give him credit: He was a really handsome guy, just my idea of what a knight should look like: tall with waist-length black hair pulled back in a ponytail, a charming goatee, not in the least bit effeminate in a worn leather jerkin and green tights. . . . Oh, all right, it was the way the tights clung to his long legs, and the jerkin opened to expose a smooth, muscled chest that really had me paying attention.

  “Butcher is an infidel. I can only hope the time comes when you realize just how cruel you are to wrong one who has sworn to you his eternal love. You must be Pepper. My darling sister told me there was a new toothsome Wench on the grounds. My lady, I am your servant.” He swept me a low, elaborate bow. “Might I hope that your heart, at least, is not claimed by any knave present?”