and his legs were encased in jointed metal. He walked stiffly and awkwardly to his horse, the big roan warhorse, which was also plated from head to tail, only its bright, excited, white-ringed eyes showing through the headpiece.
‘Is it dangerous?’ Alys asked Lord Hugh.
He nodded, smiling. ‘It can be,’ he said.
Hugo’s challenger was waiting at the other end of the lists. Catherine leaned forward, her eyes gleaming with excitement, and dropped her yellow handkerchief. At once the horses sprang forward and the two charged one another. As they came closer the lances came down, and Alys shut her eyes, dreading the sound of lance against body. All she could hear was the thunder of hooves, and then the horses were still. Lord Hugh nudged her.
‘No score,’ he said. ‘Pair of boys.’
In the second run Hugo struck his opponent on the body, on the third he took a blow to his shoulder, and on the fourth his lance hit his challenger smack in his metalled belly and threw him from the horse.
There was a great yell of approval from the watching crowd and the townspeople, who were crowded in at the gate end of the ground, threw their caps in the air and shouted ‘Hugo!’
Hugo pulled his horse up and trotted back down the lists. They were bending over the challenger and taking his helmet off.
‘Are you all right, Stewart?’ Hugo called. ‘Just winded?’
The man raised his hand. ‘A little tap,’ he said. ‘But I’ll let someone else unseat you!’
Hugo laughed and trotted back to his place. Alys sensed his complacent smile hidden beneath the helmet.
They jousted until the early afternoon and then only went in for a late dinner as the light began to fail. Hugo stripped off his armour at the ground floor of the tower and ran up the spiral stairs in his shirt and hose shouting for a bath. He was washed and dressed in his red doublet in time for dinner and sat at his father’s right hand and drank deep. As the lords ate, the mummers sang and danced, and when Lord Hugo called for the bowl and washed his hands and was served with hippocras wine the Lords of Misrule marched in from the kitchen with the lowliest server at their head.
Lord Hugh laughed and vacated his seat at the high table and took a chair at the fireside with Catherine standing behind him. They seated him comfortably and then brought a dirty apron for Hugo and ordered him to serve them all with wine. The women in the body of the hall shrieked with laughter and sent the young lord racing around the hall with one order after another. The serving-lad sat in the lord’s chair and handed down commands and judgements. A number of men were outrageously accused of girls’ play, and ordered to be tied one on another’s back in a long laughing line, to see how they liked a surfeit of it. Several of the serving-wenches were accused of venery and taking the man’s part in the act of lust. They had to publicly strip to their shifts and wear breeches for the rest of the feast. A couple of soldiers were accused of theft while raiding in Scotland with Hugo, a couple of the cooking staff were named for dirtiness. A wife was accused of infidelity, a girl who worked in the confectioner’s department of the kitchen was accused of scolding and had to wear a scarf tied across her mouth.
The serving-lad giggled and pointed to one servant after another who shrieked against the accusation and could plead guilty or not guilty and was judged by the roar of the crowd.
Then he turned his attention to the gentry. Two of the young noble servers were accused of idleness and ordered to stand on their stools and sing a carol as punishment. One of Lord Hugh’s cousins was accused of gluttony – sneaking into the kitchen after dinner begging for marchpane. Hugo’s favourite, a young lad who was always in the guardroom talking warfare with the officers, was named a seeker of favours, a courtier, and had his head blackened with soot from the fireplace.
People laughed even more and the serving-lad grew bolder. Someone cast Lord Hugh’s purple cape around his shoulders and he stood on the seat of the carved chair, jigging from one foot to the other, and pointed his finger at Hugo who was clowning around at the back of the hall with a tray and a jug of wine.
‘Lust,’ he said solemnly. The hall rocked with laughter. ‘Venery,’ he said again. ‘I shall name the women you have been with.’
There were screams of laughter, and around Alys at the women’s table a nervous ripple of discomfort. The serving-lad was lord of the feast, he could say anything without any threat of punishment. He might name any one of them as Hugo’s lover. And Catherine would not be likely to forget, nor pass off the accusation as the fun of the feast.
‘How shall you remember them all?’ someone yelled from the back of the hall. ‘It has been more than three hundred days since last year! That is at least a thousand women!’
Hugo grinned, postured, throwing back the apron to show his embroidered codpiece, thrusting his hips forward while the girls screamed with laughter. ‘It’s true,’ he said. ‘More like two thousand.’
‘I shall name the women he has not had,’ the serving-lad said quickly. ‘To save time.’
There were screams of laughter at that. Hugo bowed. Even the old lord at the fireplace chuckled. The hall fell silent, waiting to hear what the lad would say to cap the jest.
‘There is only one woman he has not had,’ the lad said, milking the joke. He swung around and pointed to Catherine where she stood beside the old lord at the fireside. ‘His wife! His wife! Lady Catherine!’
The hall was in uproar, people were screaming with laughter. Catherine’s women, still in their seats at the table on the dais, clapped their hands over their mouths to smother their laughter. Hugo bowed penitently, even the old lord was laughing. Soldiers clung to each other and the serving-lad took off Lord Hugh’s purple jewelled cap and flung it in the air and caught it to celebrate his wit. Only Catherine stood, white with anger, unsmiling.
‘Now the old lord!’ someone yelled. ‘What has he done?’
The serving-lad pointed solemnly at Lord Hugh. ‘You are very, very guilty, and you become guiltier every year,’ he said.
Lord Hugh chuckled and waited for more.
‘And every year, though you do less, you are the more guilty,’ the serving-lad said.
‘A riddle!’ someone yelled. ‘A riddle! What is his crime?’
‘What is my crime?’ Hugh asked. ‘That I do less and less every year and am more and more guilty?’
‘You grow old!’ the serving-lad yelled triumphantly.
There was a great roar of scandalized laughter led by Lord Hugh. He shook his fist at the lad. ‘I had best not see you tomorrow,’ he shouted. ‘Then you shall see how old my broadsword is!’
The serving-lad danced on the chair and knocked his skinny knees together, miming terror. ‘And now!’ he yelled. ‘I order dancing!’
He slid from the cape and left the cap on the great chair and led out the dirtiest, lowliest slut from the kitchen to take his hand at the head of the set. Other people, still chuckling, fell in behind them. Alys leaned towards Eliza.
‘D’you see her face?’ she said softly.
Eliza nodded. ‘He’s worse than last year,’ she said. ‘And he was impertinent
