Sir Eustace took three paces after him, then stopped. He turned towards me – bound, gagged and helpless in my chair – and swiftly pulled the lance-dagger from its broad leather sheath at his right side. He advanced on dancer’s feet and the killing blow, when it came, hurt no more than a heavy punch to the breast, a feeling of hard pressure rather than pain. I looked down in surprise to see Sir Eustace’s mailed sleeve, and his fist on the wooden handle, and the Holy Lance embedded deep in my chest, perhaps an inch or two to the left of my sternum.
He pulled it out with a wet tearing noise, a gust of stale lung air, and a gush of bright blood. And with the blood, the pain came roaring through me.
I looked up at his face, and he smiled at me, his amiable idiot’s grin. He saluted me by lifting the blood-smeared lance-dagger to his brow, and then he ran to the north-eastern corner of the chapel, and disappeared through the same door that had swallowed his Master.
Part Three
Chapter Nineteen
Young Alan is back with us again at Westbury a mere month after his last visit. He has been sent home in disgrace after savagely beating a fellow squire with his fists after some petty boys’ disagreement in Kirkton. The other lad’s father, Lord Stafford, is said to be extremely angry. And Marie, Alan’s mother, blames me.
‘It is your silly stories that have made him behave in this barbaric way, you old fool! You should know better at your age. I told you that you shouldn’t be wallowing in your violent past again, dredging up your blood-hungry tales; I told you that no good would come of it. And wasn’t I proved right?’
Although I dearly love her, she can be something of a shrew, my daughter-in-law.
‘Boys fight,’ I told her. ‘It is quite natural, but, if you wish, I will speak to young Alan about the matter.’
My grandson was unrepentant about his victory over the other boy: ‘He insulted the honour of our family, and so I was obliged to punish him,’ he said, and when I enquired further, he told me that the boy had been spreading the word among the other noblemen’s sons at Kirkton that Alan’s great-grandfather, my own father Henry, had been a villein, who had been hanged as a thief by the Sheriff.
‘I told him all about the tale you are setting down, Grandpa, and the search for the “man you cannot refuse” who ordered your father’s death, and he went off and told everyone else. They all started to call me “plough boy” and “dirty serf”. And so I took my vengeance on him. I paid him back for his insolence. Tell me honestly, Grandpa, would you not have done the same thing yourself?’
I found it difficult to answer him: I might very well have done exactly the same in those circumstances; I well remembered a bully who called himself Guy who had tormented me when I was Alan’s age, and how I had been revenged upon him, but I knew that Marie would make my life a living hell if I did not try to teach the boy to behave himself in a civilized manner among his peers.
I scowled at him: ‘You are supposed to be learning how to be a knight, up there in Kirkton,’ I said sternly. ‘And a knight is a gentleman; he does not brawl like a tavern drunk with his fellows. Furthermore, Our Lord Jesus Christ has taught us that it is better to turn the other cheek when we are wronged. A true Christian knight would have forgiven his enemy for the wrong that had been done to him – he would have meekly turned away and given up his wrath for the sake of peace.’
At my age, after all that I have been through in this long life, I had thought myself beyond shame. But I felt the burn of shame then – it seemed as if my prating hypocrisy to my grandson were choking me – and young Alan could sense my falseness as keenly as a pig smells buried acorns.
‘Would you truly have forgiven a man who blackened your name like that; who insulted you and mocked you behind your back?’ asked Alan, his face blazing with innocence. He was honestly seeking the truth, desperately wanting to know how to be. I couldn’t look him in the eye: ‘The fruits of vengeance are almost always death and sorrow – for all concerned,’ I said, and I picked up a bundle of parchments. ‘Read this and you will see what happened to my good friend Hanno, and to me, as a direct result of my seeking vengeance on the “man you cannot refuse”. And perhaps this will persuade you that revenge is a futile path, and that there is a greater wisdom for Mankind in Christ’s teachings.’ And I shoved the second part of this tale at him; partly for his education, partly to get him to stop looking at me that way.
I did not pass out, at least, not then. I watched, gagged, bound and bleeding, as the Master and Sir Eustace de la Falaise made their escape from the side door in the Bishop’s chapel in the Abbey of St Victor. The skirmish was over; the surviving Knights of Our Lady, only three or four of them, seeing their Master flee, made a fighting retreat to the main door and ran for it themselves, and Little John let them go. Presumably they went to summon reinforcements or raise the hue and cry within the Abbey – we did not tarry long enough to find out.