The Ill-Made Knight (70 page)

War-bow shafts began to fall like wicked sleet on the barricade and the men behind it.

I hadn’t intended to run, but I found myself trotting, and the line trotted to keep up with me.

There were shouts ahead.

I felt . . . strong. There was no reason that a frontal assault on the barricades should be going this well, and I had time to consider that it was a trap – that there was cavalry concealed to my left. But my last glance at my men had shown Thornbury’s battle coming up on my left and Thomas Biston’s on my right. If it was a trap, their Germans would need a hell of a lot of cavalry.

Baumgarten was deploying behind me.

We were as well placed as we were going to be.

I was running – in sabatons. Somewhere in my line was a man cursing his squire, but that day it was not me. Our line was fair enough, and the rising sun turned the tips of our spears to fire.

The men behind the barricades were seething. Men ran back and forth – fifty voices were calling and, as I watched, a guildsman tried to force his way to the barricade to loose his weapon and was roughly forced back by a German man-at-arms.

I looked for the pennants I wanted.

Twenty paces from the barricade, I realized that unless God and his legion of angels came down to stop us, we’d make the barricade. The crossbows had been ill-aimed and desultory, for whatever reason.

Typically, when men fight at barricades – at least in the lists – men stand on either side of a waist-high wooden wall and exchange blows. You can’t be hit below your breastplate and your opponent can’t grapple.

I’d never fought at a barricade.

But I’d stormed a few towns, and I had a different notion of how to tackle the wall. I had no intention of giving any other man de Charny’s dagger.

Five paces out, I lengthened my stride. There were half a dozen Germans waiting for me, jostling to be the one to face me across the barrier.

All or nothing.

I leaped.

I almost didn’t make it, which would have shortened this tale immensely, but I got my left foot on the barricade, my spear struck something, and then . . .

Ah, and then I fought.

I landed deep in their ranks. Armour protects you from the abrasions and cuts of small blows, and for the first few cuts, it was all I could do to get my feet under me. I was close in – I had a man right against my breast, and my spear shaft was already broken – no idea how. I drew de Charny’s dagger and stabbed – one, two, three times, as fast as my hand would move. It came away bloody, then I turned and stabbed behind me. I put my left hand on the pommel of the dagger, received a great blow to my head that rang bells, and grappled close to a man. He got one hand on the dagger, but his other held his sword, and my two-handed grip overcame him. He had no visor, and my dagger went in over his nose.

I kicked out behind me on instinct, and then I had space. I stumbled and put my back against the barrier, and for three deep breaths the Germans stood back. I put the dagger back in my sheath – St George must have guided my hand – and drew my longsword.

I took the time to bow and salute them. And breathe.

And then, of course, I attacked them.

I put my sword down in one of Fiore’s guards – the boar’s tooth – and cut up at the first German’s hands. He had heavy leather gloves rather than steel gauntlets, and he sprayed fingers and screamed. My down cut stopped on his arms and I pushed it into his face.

The other two hammered blows at me, but they were thrown too fast, with too much fear. Both hit – one dented my left rebrace, and the other fell on the peak of my helmet, cut away a portion of Emile’s favour, and glanced off the overlapping plates of my right spaulder.

I cut at the second man’s head. He had a red coat over his coat of plates, and a full helmet that covered his face. My adversary swatted heavily at my blade, and I allowed his blow to turn mine and hammered his faceplate with my pommel, knocking him back a step. He raised his hands. I passed my blade over his head and kicked him in the gut while I held him, and he dropped – neck broken or unconscious. Either way, down.

Blows hit me. Many blows. A man in armour can take all the blows that don’t kill him. My armour was good.

There were voices calling in English all around me. I pushed forward, and my opponents backed away.

To their rear, I saw Rudolph von Hapsburg’s banner go up.

All around me, men were calling, ‘George! St George and England!’ and I narrowly avoided putting my point into Milady’s basinet – she, of all people, I should have known in a mêlée. I have no idea how she’d passed me, but I fought from behind her for as long as a man takes to mount a horse. I pinked some Florentine in the leg, stabbing down, and she slammed her sword into his head. I doubt he fell dead – I suspect he’d merely had enough.

I think by then my whole battle – my command – was over the barricade and in the muddy trench behind it. A few guildsmen stood, and a few local men-at-arms were ashamed to show fear in front of their ladies, who even then were on the walls behind them. But most of the local men ran for the gate, leaving the Swabians to face a rising tide of Englishmen and Germans.

Rudolph von Hapsburg may have been proud and boastful – Messire Villani says he was – but he was brave. He led his knights in person, and he charged at us. But it is harder to charge through a rout of fleeing men than it is to charge through a deluge of arrows or crossbow bolts. His men were pushed aside – they came at us in packets.

I wanted the giant. I could see him – he was a head taller than any other man, his pennon was black and he had a spear and an axe – he was off to my right. I shamelessly stepped back from an opponent and left him to Edward, passed behind Fiore, got two more paces – it was like pushing through a crowd at a fair – and there he was, hammering at MacDonald with his axe. MacDonald caught all three of his heavy blows, then tripped on a corpse – all those war-bow shafts had reaped more than a few Florentines – and his fall kept him from the giant’s smashing blow.

I stepped into the gap. I remember as I stepped up, seeing a flash of gold on the helmet hard by Sir Heinrich. It had to be a gold cornet, and that meant the next knight to the left was Rudolph.

Heinrich raised his axe and cut. Big men are supposed to be slow. He wasn’t. The axe flicked back and shot forward – I cut it to the right with an underhand blow, and he turned the axe in mid air and cut back at me. I had to put my left hand on the blade of my sword to parry – a technique Fiore taught me. I made my sword a staff.

I was close to him, and I smashed my guard into his visor. It wasn’t much of a hit, but every hit counts.

He stumbled back one step, and I cut at him from the shoulder, as hard and fast as I could.

He caught it on his axe blade.

A blow caught my helmet squarely and I stumbled.

Apparently, single combat is an Anglo-French convention. Rudolph’s sword was pushing for my eye-slits, but I batted it down and my back cut only just saved me from the axe.

Rudolph’s sword licked out again and slammed my hand, but I had good gauntlets. He broke my little finger and it hurt like fuck. He punched the point at my head as my gaurd weakened, and his point went in between the base of my helmet and the chin of my aventail – suddenly my mouth was full of blood.

I had a few breaths to live, if that. He’d cut open my mouth – look, this scar right here – I still have the devil’s smile, as we call it.

I pivoted toward Rudolph, fought through the pain and cut down at his shoulder. Then I pushed in with my other foot, driving forward with my not-inconsiderable size, flinching in my head from the inevitable axe-blow. I wagered my life that I could get so far forward into Rudolph that Heinrich wouldn’t be able to hit me. I had no choice. It was all or nothing.

I was mostly right, and the staff of the axe slammed into my shoulder plates as my blow deceived Rudolph and hit his arm just below his shoulder armour – it landed on mail, but it broke the arm. Heinrich’s hit on my shoulder landed on my pauldrons. That hurt, but pain was just pain.

I thrust for Rudolph’s face – my best blow. Halfway to the target, I dropped my point the width of his sword and changed the direction subtly, so his parry moved nothing but the wind. My point missed his face but got into the chain aventail at his neck, bit deep, through chain and padding, and came away red.

I caught that at the edge of my vision, because I was already turning to parry the axe. The giant cut, and I counter-cut at his hands. I hit first. I hit his hands so hard he voided his blow.

Kenneth MacDonald got to his feet. He, too, had an axe, and he raised it.

Heinrich rotated fully to face me. I’d cut away a finger and he bellowed like a bull, while MacDonald’s axe slammed into his chest. It didn’t cut through the heavy iron plates of his coat, but it must have broken ribs, and he sat down, falling back across his Prince.

A trumpet was sounding the recall.

I was breathing so hard I could hardly keep my point in line.

Heinrich bounced to his feet again, blood pouring from his left gauntlet.

I cut up from the boar’s tooth again, and took off the giant’s thumb. MacDonald passed behind me and cut at yet another man, probably saving my life, but that’s a mêlée. I was utterly focused on my giant.

He had killed Perkin.

He leaped forward off Rudolph von Hapsburg and I cut down, into his exposed thigh. He pushed through it and kept his feet a heartbeat, but the leg wouldn’t hold him, and I was reversing my sword, holding it with one hand on the hilt and the other at the point, as if it was a very short spear, or a shovel for digging.

As he tried to get his balance, I slammed it into his faceplate. The visor held.

The man fell back.

The Germans were retreating, but they were also just realizing that their lord was lying on the ground at my feet. Heinrich had fallen across him as he tried to rise, crushing him to the ground. He fell with his arms spread – he’d lost fingers on both hands, and there was blood coming from under his helmet.

I stepped on his right hand, pinning the axe hand to the ground. I could see his eyes. Not mad, or filled with hate.

Just blue.

I put the tip of my war sword against his throat, where the skin showed. He’d fallen with his head back, so his aventail didn’t quite cover his chin.

I won’t say the battle stopped, just that I could hear men screaming in Italian and German, but very few men moving and everyone watching me.

I put the slightest pressure on the pommel of my sword.

So he’d know that I was the better man.

‘Yield!’ I said. Like a knight.

‘
Ja!
’ he said.

They let us go from the barriers. For one terrifying moment, they thought I was going to kill their Prince, and when I accepted Heinrich’s surrender, Rudolph ‘graciously’ allowed us to retire.

That’s what knights do.

When they’re badly beaten.

I had to have help to get over the barricades. With 15,000 people watching me from the walls and from our lines, I could barely walk without limping, because my left leg-harness had slipped a fraction and every step hurt.

I forced myself to walk like a gentleman, with all the time in the world. I had to get my visor up to spit blood – my mouth was full of it and my white coat was covered.

Baumgarten’s knights were cheering like heroes. They’d covered the barricade behind us, and many of them had fought, so no discredit to them. They walked back with us, slapping us on our backplates and calling things, which Fiore, who was all but glowing, refused to translate.

‘That was . . .’ he said. He said it twice.

Baumgarten himself came forward, which seemed odd, since we were retreating. We’d made our point. In fact, we’d scared the piss out of Florence. Juan, Milady and Grice were apparently able to touch the gate before we retired.

The archers were yelling, ‘George and England.’

Baumgarten headed straight for me. His armour sparkled, and he wore the gold belt of a Knight of the Empire. He looked like a king.

He opened his visor.

A few paces from me, he stopped and handed his squire the baton he carried.

‘William Gold!’ he roared, so that they could hear him in the squares of Florence.

I stopped in front of him, so utterly exhausted that I had lost the power of speech.

Sir John came up – he was all but running – and men-at-arms crowded in.

‘William Gold,’ Buamgarten said again. ‘Kneel!’

Kneel?

Sweet saviour of man, I might never get up.

But I knelt.

Edward appeared from the crowd and began to fumble with my aventail. ‘Oh my God!’ he said. ‘My God, sir!’

He got it over my head. There was a lot of blood in it from my mouth wound.

Baumgarten turned to Sir John. ‘Do you wish to do this?’ he said.

Sir John shook his head. ‘If
you
do it here, in bowshot of the walls, no one will ever be able to question the making.’

Sir Hannekin Baumgarten drew his sword. ‘William Gold – birth enobles, but nothing enobles like a life of arms. A deed such as I just witnessed—’

‘Guildsmen coming. Winding their crossbows,’ muttered a squire.

Sam Bibbo, I’m told, loosed a shaft then and there. I didn’t see it, but men who did say it flew 300 paces and frightened the wits out of a trio of Florentine guildsmen. Or killed all three, if you believe some.

The sword smacked down on my right shoulder, a little too damned hard. ‘I dub thee knight,’ Baumgarten said.

‘By St Nicholas! What was it all for?’ cursed my lady Janet as we rode south.

The days after my knighting were not pleasant. I had a fever from my mouth wound, and it wouldn’t heal. I got it stitched twice.

If I were telling you a set of stories, monsieur, I’d tell you some pleasant fiction: that Florence sent out emissaries to Sir John, and he drove a hard bargain and settled an honourable peace.

That sounds well, does it not?

But what Florence actually did while I lay in my tent and moaned, was to pay a number of men, including the Imperial Knight who’s buffet had just enobled me in front of 20,000 onlookers. Florence paid them enormous bribes, and our army, victorious in the field, vanished like alpine mist under a Tuscan sun. The Germans left first, but the money went far – even into the White Company.