ladies with my life.”
“Good. I will send a company of men to assist you. Robert—”
“With my life, my lord!”
Neville nodded, clapped a hand briefly on Courtenay’s shoulder, then melted into the crowds behind them.
Bolingbroke arrived in much greater splendour than his wife, but to no less acclaim. He cantered onto the field atop a great, white dancing stallion caparisoned in crimson and emerald green silks and tassels. Atop Bolingbroke’s brow rested a glinting golden crown, resplendent with gems, and about his shoulders hung a purple velvet cloak, trimmed with ermine. His tunic and leggings were all of cloth of gold, richly embroidered and thickly crusted with pearls and silver threads. His face was confident and joyous, and he stood in the stirrups, waving to the crowd, and shouting to them his well-wishes and his love for them.
It was fine theatre.
At the head of the field Bolingbroke reined in his stallion, sinking back into the saddle. He raised his glorious face, staring directly at Mary. As she nodded, he smiled, and bowed in the saddle to her, making humble obeisance to his wife.
The crowd adored it.
“He should have been an actor on the stage,” Mary whispered to Margaret.
“He would not dare not to love you,” Margaret replied. “Not here. Not now.”
Mary gave a very small nod, then smiled the greater at her husband, now rising from his bow, and waved at him with her hand to join her in the royal box.
“We are all actors in this great drama,” she said, and then she turned her head to Margaret and looked her full in the eye. “But sometimes I think there is more to this plot than my ladies will tell me.”
Before a startled Margaret could think of a response, Mary had turned back to Bolingbroke, now dismounting from his stallion, composing her face into a smile of proper wifely love and respect.
“Best give me your vial of Culpeper’s liquor now, Margaret,” Mary murmured, “so that I may the better play my part.”
The tournament began immediately Bolingbroke had taken his place beside Mary and nodded his readiness to the officials.
Within ten minutes the grinding, bloody, sweaty, bone-breaking, heart-stopping action had begun. Having agreed to the tournament itself, Bolingbroke had nevertheless drawn the line at allowing the traditional melee of several hundred knights drawn up into two opposing forces that charged down the field to engage in several hours of hacking, clouting and cursing until only a few men (and horses) were left standing. Instead, the action began with something only a little less spectacular.
The tourney field had been divided into twenty-five jousting lanes, and at the drop of the official’s flag, fifty knights lowered their lances and kicked their stallions into action. The thunder of the great horses’ hooves as they crashed down the lanes was outdone only by the screams of the crowd and the eventual grinding and screeching as lances struck or glanced off the breastplates and shields of opponents. Some knights managed to hold their seats, others were unhorsed on their first pass and left to flounder on the turf hoping the momentum of their fall and the weight of their armour wouldn’t roll them into the path of an oncoming destrier.
Destriers were bred for their density and thickness of muscle, their strength and their weight: they were not renowned for their ability to jump anything larger than a mouse or dodge anything in less than a gentle quarter-mile curve.
One man died and two were crippled when the huge, sharpened hooves of galloping destriers cut right through their armour and the bones and flesh beneath.
The horses trampled on, almost unaware of the men they had cut to ribbons beneath their hooves.
The unhorsed knights who managed to roll to their feet rather than under the oncoming death of destriers, steadied themselves and drew their swords. Those knights who made it to the other end of the jousting lanes still on their horses now dismounted and drew their own swords, striding as best they could in their enveloping armour back down the jousting lanes to meet their opponents in true chivalric fashion, one on one, sword to sword. Blades clattered against heads and necks, trying to find that sweet opening between helmet and shoulder and breast armour.
Opponents rested after each swing, gathering their strength to once again raise the massive blades with arms made heavy by their encasing armour and strike again.
Blood seeped out from joints in armour, and trailed in apologetic rivulets down breast and thigh plates. Breathing became harsh, and was intermixed with curses and shouted entreaties for aid to sundry saints. Some men pissed or shat themselves, either with fear or exertion, and the stink of urine and faeces added itself to the other manly odours of battle.
The crowd went wild. Men surged against barriers, each individual shouting encouragement to the knights of his choice, and curses against their opponents. Some spectators threw rocks and other missiles into the arena. Some turned against their neighbours and sent fists crashing into cheekbones and chins in the excitement of the moment.
The behaviour of the noble families and wives in the stands was scarcely better. Women leaped to their feet, waving streamers of their household colours, urging their menfolk on to greater efforts with voices shrill with battle lust. Young pages and valets, beside themselves with sorrow that they should not be on the field themselves, punched fists into the air, and shouted wagers into the din, sure that their lord would be the one to prevail.
And amid all this, the valets and pages of the fallen darted among the warriors on the field, litters dragging and bumping behind them, searching out their masters that they might attempt to roll them onto the litters and get them to the dubious safety of the surgeons’ tents.
Bolingbroke leaned forward eagerly, one fist clenched, his eyes straining to take in all the action.
“Surely this death and maiming is not so exciting?” Mary murmured, sickened at the sight before her.
“I need to know on whom I can rely on the battlefield,” Bolingbroke replied, not lifting his eyes from the action. Then he relaxed a little, and leaned back. “There? See? It is all but done. Some knights have conceded, while others have won outright.”
He stood and clapped his approval of the actions of the men below, and the crowds roared with him. The fighting was done now, and some knights strutted off the field, having triumphed against their opponents; later they would receive tokens from the king to mark their victory. Others slumped wearily, shamed. And others twisted, moaning, or, worse, lay still on the grass waiting for the final scurrying pages to come by with their litters.
And when all was finally cleared, men darted out with baskets of sawdust to dry out the patches of clotting red so that the next two lines of jousters would not slip and fall on the blood of their predecessors.
The day proceeded.
Neville wandered through the barely-controlled chaos amid the tents and horse lines of the nobles. Several rounds of jousting had now taken place, and soon the tournament would move into its most exciting stage: the great nobles, men who had fought and lived through a score of battles, would joust
