I looked back and forth. ‘A parry with a lance? In a joust?’ I asked.
Nerio raised an eyebrow. ‘Too professional,’ he said with a little of his old disdain for Fiore. But he softened it with a smile. ‘For me, at any rate.’
Fiore shrugged. ‘It is not against any rule.’
Nerio put a hand on Fiore’s shoulder. ‘My friend, there are rules that are not written down.’
Fiore frowned. ‘If there is not a rule against it written down, it is not a rule,’ he said.
I got the new helmet seated and the chinstrap buckled, and rode down the lists, still undecided.
Word of our tilt had spread, and other knights and squires were coming for their scheduled bouts. The ‘great’ men had had five days, and now the lesser knights, men like me and Fiore, were to be allowed three days of jousting and foot combat, and their own mêlée.
And all along one side of the list stood a troop of horsemen. I had never seen anything like them, and they were distracting me. They wore long coats, buttoned at the shoulder and edged in fur, even the least of them. Two of them carried hawks, and all had lances and bows.
I had never seen men with such deep lines on their faces. They looked like killers, every one of them.
I took deep breaths and took them out of my head, and then I set my thoughts on the lists and my opponent. He flicked his lance head at me. I returned the compliment, if indeed it was such.
When the marshal’s white wand dropped, I put spurs to Jacques, and he blew forward with his usual explosive grace. Before his third stride, though, I had my lance in its rest – so different from my first years with the weapon – and I let the head fall low.
Lowering your lance head is bad practice. It is terrifying. A low blow, a blow to your opponent’s horse, forfeits not just the run but your own horse and armour. It is considered cheating. With my lance across my body, under my right arm and couched against my lance rest on the right of my breast plate, but pointing to the left side of my horse’s head and across the barrier, and now aimed down, almost at the ground, it looked as if I’d lost control of my lance. This happens sometimes in the joust.
My opponent still had his lance tip high in the air. He didn’t couch until the last possible moment, just the way, let me add, that Boucicault used his lance.
We had heartbeats to impact.
His lance tip stooped towards my face and I did as Fiore had taught me and flipped my lance up, using my saddle bow as a fulcrum and my lance as a lever. It came up very fast, and our lances crossed, still in the air. But weight and the power of his lance on mine slapped them down again.
He missed his lance rest. With all the pressure my lance was putting on his lance, torqueing it, he’d have had to be Lancelot himself to maintain control.
My hit was unspectacular, just barely clipping his shield. But my lance-staff snapped cleanly with the impact, and he lost control of his lance three strides later and it fell to the earth.
The foreigners with the hawks were laughing and slapping their long whips against their thighs. One waved to me.
The judges all clustered at the centre of the lists.
Fiore slapped my back. ‘That was nicely done,’ he said, rare praise indeed. Then, ‘We need to practice your seat and how it relates to your control of the lance, but otherwise – good.’ He looked at Nerio. ‘I wish some Frenchman would challenge me.’
‘Find the man’s wife and sleep with her!’ Nerio said with a sneer.
‘Why?’ Fiore asked, genuinely puzzled.