Knight Tenebrae Page 5

  As he went, a frisson skittered up his spine and he looked around. It was a feeling of being watched. But the riders ahead paid him no attention and the landscape was otherwise empty. Alex peered at the forest edge, trying to discern anything lurking among the trees, but found nobody. Nevertheless, the feeling persisted. Finally he returned his attention to Lindsay and tried to shrug off the creepy feeling.

  When she finished cutting the shroud lines and bundled up the fabric, she was able to run back and hand it all up to him, along with their helmets.

  “What’s this for?” He snapped the helmets together by their face masks, and draped them over the horse’s withers.

  “It’s cloth. It’s lightweight, and it’s not far off from silk in texture. Even if we don’t use it, we can sell it.”

  Alex grunted and held the bundle under one arm while helping her up onto the horse with his other. They proceeded onward.

  Shortly after nightfall they came to an encampment lit by torches and bonfires and surrounded by wagons on which hung many round, wooden shields faced outward as on a battlement. Except for the amazing array of colors and symbols on the shields, it struck Alex as having the appearance of a wagon train circled for an Indian attack. No doubt the shields served the same defensive purpose against arrows.

  He and Lindsay had eaten nothing since before catapulting from the ship that morning, and his stomach was now a tight knot. This place was a long way from his world where fast food restaurants stood every mile or so, and even with the purse filled with silver in a pocket of his flight suit there’d been no food to be had on the trail. Smells of roasting meat wafted through the air here, making his mouth water and his stomach churn.

  Once inside the camp perimeter the older knight went his own way, followed by most of the squires. Only the one young knight and a couple of squires continued on with Robert toward the tent in the center of the gathering. Alex took that as an invitation to buzz off for the time being, so he began to look around for a place to park.

  The camp wasn’t large, but had the atmosphere of a circus town. Tents were pitched in clusters between which were streets paved with trampled pasture, and entrepreneurial camp followers had set up shop in temporary shelters here and there. Blacksmith, baker, poulterer sold their wares to the scattering of men and boys who appeared to be Bruce’s army of knights. There were women, but very few, and they all seemed to be maintaining camp for the men or hawking wares to them. A troupe of entertainers at a crossing of the “streets” attracted a crowd and amused onlookers in exchange for coins thrown. “This place looks like a Renaissance faire.”

  Lindsay replied in a low, tired voice. “Except the Renaissance won’t happen for a while yet. We’re still in the dark ages. These people don’t bathe often, they think vegetables are bad for you, and they think any woman without a male relative is a candidate for rape.” She considered her words for a moment, then said, “Of course, all those things were true during the Renaissance as well.”

  “Yup, makes ya wonder, don’t it?” Alex wondered for a moment, then said, “You sure know a lot about this period.”

  “I’m English. Unlike you Americans, we take our history seriously.”

  That stung. “You think we don’t take our history seriously?”

  “How can you? You haven’t any.”

  Alex had no desire to play that game with her, and so fell silent. There was a clear spot under a tall oak tree. He decided this would do, pulled up his horse and dismounted, then helped Lindsay down. “Here,” he told her, “why don’t you take these coins and buy us something to eat.” Then he took his survival vest from her and pulled out the two condoms he carried there. “Here, wait.” He handed over one of the foil packets.

  “I beg your pardon?” She twiddled it between her fingers, looking like she wanted to hand it back.

  “Relax, it’s not a come-on. Just take this and fill it with water if you can find some clean. And see if you can get some wood for a fire.”

  “Do you know how to start a fire without matches?”

  “Even better. I’ve got matches in my survival vest.” He hefted the garment loaded with gear.

  “You know you’ll need to learn how if we don’t find a way home soon.”

  He didn’t want to think about that. Much better to look for a way home. But rather than argue, he said, “Yeah, but for tonight I’m tired, I’m starving, my legs are killing me, and my crotch feels like someone smacked me in the nuts with a log. That saddle was not meant for humans to ride.” He reached for the horse’s reins, but Lindsay stopped him.

  “No. Allow me.”

  “I’ll get it.”

  “No. You can’t be seen attending to your horse. You’re nobility and a knight. It would be a disgrace. I’ll do it.”

  He considered that for a moment, then sucked air between his front teeth with an irritated hiss. “All right. I figure you’re sure to know more about this class system than I do. Take the horse. Get him some feed. Do what you need to.”

  She hobbled the horse with ropes she found in a small saddle hag, removed the saddle, and put it on the ground nearby. She unbuckled the faceplate, removed the bridle and the long piece of chain mail draped over the horse’s neck, and set them atop the saddle. Lastly, she hauled the enormous, quilted skirt from the animal’s back. It was a struggle to organize and fold the heavy piece of fabric, but when Alex stepped close to help she warned him away with a look. Finally she hurried off on the errands, and Alex watched her go. Then he glanced around their chosen spot and wondered what to do next. Were he back on his ship, he would have eaten and crawled into his bunk by now, lulled to sleep by the clacking of Eddie’s laptop or kept awake by Ron’s raucous and irregular snoring. It seemed his body could tell it had traversed far more than just distance today, and he ached to lie down and be still. But there were things to do before he could rest. He bent to pick at the shroud lines binding the bundle of parachutes.

  A knight in silk surcoat, and more than his share of plate armor while the man who was soon to be king wore very little of it, approached, and began talking to Alex in a voice thick with belligerence. With Lindsay not there to translate, all Alex could do was shrug and shake his head, hold his palms up, and explain in modern English that he didn’t understand. The guy tried to crowd him, but Alex held his ground and repeated that he didn’t speak the language. The fancy-dressed knight didn’t seem to have a particular beef with him; his voice carried a sort of generalized challenge. Alex wanted to avoid it at all costs, and shook his head. A frown darkened the man’s face, and he stepped in to crowd Alex again, and this time raised a gauntleted fist to strike.

  Chapter Three

  “Wait a minute. I don’t want any trouble.” Alex backed off a step, then another. But the fancy-armored knight crowded some more, growling at him in that weird French. “Hey, cut it out, or I’m gonna have to hurt you, man.” Still the stranger crowded, spitting his words as he came. Finally Alex shoved him.

  The knight hauled off, and Alex ducked the punch. As he circled, he raised his fists and noted his opponent’s leather gauntlets were riveted with knuckle plates. “Listen, I don’t know what your problem is, man, but if you don’t get the hell away from here I’m going to have to take you out.” The warning did nothing. Finally Alex broke for the gear and pulled his sword from the scabbard.

  That made the knight go silent, for he had only his dagger with him, scabbarded at his belt. When he spoke again, his tone was far more reasonable. Alex wasn’t in the mood for guessing what the guy wanted, so he pointed to the knight’s chest, then flicked his fingers away in a brush-off gesture that indicated he should leave. For a long moment the knight frowned at him, then up at the tree under which Alex and Lindsay had staked their territory. Then with a single word that Alex took as an expletive of some sort, the knight backed away and left. Alex watched him go, his sword at en garde until his attacker was out of sight.

  Nearby stood a man, looking like a monk with his
face in the shadow of a deep hood. Alex stared, wondering what the guy had found so fascinating, then answered his own question with a glance at his dark green flight suit and heavy leather boots. His military haircut was attracting glances as well, and he noticed he was the only man in sight whose hair didn’t at least cover his ears. He returned his sword to its scabbard, then Looked back at the hooded man, but he was gone. Alex looked around, but there was no trace of him. Not the entire length of the camp.

  He shrugged off the creepy feeling and turned to the tasks at hand.

  Unwilling to just sit around like a lump for the sake of appearing noble, Alex unbundled the parachutes and shook them out. One he tied with a piece of shroud line at the middle of its leading edge to an overhead branch, then he went around the outside, spreading it into a tent, weighting the edges with rocks and leaving a gap at the front. As tents went it wasn’t huge, not compared to the one into which Bruce and that young knight had disappeared, but it would keep the dew off himself and Lindsay in the morning. The other parachute he folded and laid on the ground inside for a sleeping pallet. Not the height of comfort, but better than bare ground.

  His mail shirt fit tightly enough to be a problem. He couldn’t just pull it over his head like a T-shirt, and it wasn’t wide enough for him to slip his arms inside and push up. At first he bent over, trying to get it to slide off onto the ground, but it was too long and heavy to slip over his flight suit. He nearly got stuck with it halfway off. Then he thought a moment, and approached the job in parts. He hiked the bottom edge of the chain over his hips, then bent. Moving almost like an inchworm, he heaved the mass of chain up over his back and encouraged it to slide off onto the ground inside the tent. Lindsay returned as it fell into a sloppy, metal heap with a hissing, chinking noise.

  “I could have helped you with that. Should have; it’s my job.”

  He shrugged and picked up the shirt to shake it out. She had with her a roast bird of some kind wrapped in a piece of linen cloth, a loaf of bread, an entire cheese the size of Alex’s spread fingers, a water skin that turned out to be filled with wine, the water-filled condom that looked like a balloon with a nipple at one end, a bundle of sticks, and some fodder for the horse. She handed back the purse.

  “I only needed a few of those silver coins. Apparently those are pence. We’ve got a little over two pounds of silver in there.”

  “You weighed it?”

  “I counted it. Two hundred and forty pence actually weighs a pound. That’s where the word comes from. Anyway, there are also five sapphires of varying size, three emeralds, and two pearls. The smallest stone is apparently worth more than you would want to lug around in silver. There don’t seem to be any pound coins around here anywhere. Some foreign gold, but no English cash larger than these pence.”

  Alex hefted the jingling leather sack, then tucked it into a pocket of his flight suit.

  He built a fire, and beside it he and Lindsay proceeded to demolish most of the food and all of the wine. The roast bird was large like a turkey, but dark and greasy.

  “What is this, a goose?”

  “Swan.”

  Alex did a take. “Really? They eat swans here?”

  “I imagine they eat pretty much anything they can catch and cook. And swans are plentiful.”

  Folks walking past stopped to admire the brightly colored parachute tent, and often reached over to feel the texture of the cloth. One man made an offer to buy it, but Alex preferred to hang onto his shelter, since he didn’t appear to need the cash just then and had no way of knowing what might be a good deal.

  Lindsay took a big swig from the wine skin to finish it, made a face, and said in a choked voice, “I can’t believe they call that wine. It’s more like grape juice gone off.”

  “I don’t know, I kinda like it. Sweet.”

  She gave him a look that told him he was too pedestrian for words. “You have an American sweet tooth.”

  He opened his mouth for a crack about the wine being as English as she was, but changed his mind and kept it to himself. Instead he shrugged and said, “Okay, I’m not a big wine drinker. So shoot me.”

  She grinned.

  With a nod, he indicated the people around in the camp. “How come you can tell what those folks are saying? Whenever I think I recognize a word, it turns out they’re saying something else.”

  “Right word, different meaning.”

  Alex gazed at her and waited for her to elaborate on that obscure comment.

  “You’ve got to think in terms of word roots. And concentrate on the basics. Nouns and verbs. And consonants. Vowels are a nightmare, which explains a lot of weird spelling conventions in modern English. Like this she looked up for a moment, plundering her memory, then again at him and recited, ‘A kneegt ther was, and that a worthy man.’’

  Alex hadn’t a clue. “A kneegt?”

  “Knight.”

  “No kidding?”

  She nodded. “Think of how it’s spelled, and pronounce every letter. The i’s will tend to sound like long e’s, that sort of thing. Lots of words will sound funny because they’ll have an extra syllable here and there. The good news is that the basic grammar is more or less intact. Sort of. It’s been said that Middle English is really German spoken with a French accent.”

  “That would be good if I knew French or German.”

  “If you can decipher Shakespeare on your own, you’ll have a good shot at this.”

  Alex pondered that for a moment. “But, soft.”

  Lindsay smiled. “Means, ‘Wait, be quiet.’”

  “Go on. Tell me more about that kneegt.”

  She obliged readily, and recited while they finished eating, translating each sentence as she went.

  Later, gnawing on a leg bone and feeling better, but still hungry enough to consider breaking the bone and sucking out the marrow, Alex asked, “So, what’s going to happen next?”

  “How would I know?”

  He sucked some grease from his lower lip and said, “You’re History Girl, aren’t you?”

  “Well, it’s not as if I have Robert’s diary memorized, is it? Not that there was one,”

  “Okay, then how long do we have until Bannockburn?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Everyone knows about that. Besides, I studied the battle in school. Well, okay, it was mentioned in school. One of the first battles in which foot soldiers clobbered knights. Battle tactics. I was a wiz.”

  “Don’t forget, you’re now one of those knights.”

  He grunted. “I’m a pilot. A Hornet driver.”

  “I daresay that matters little here.”

  Alex had no reply to that, and only gazed blandly at her for a moment. Then he said, “So, how long do we have till Bannockburn?”

  She thought, then replied, “1314. Eight years from now, if our host this morning was telling the truth. I think.” She glanced up at the sky, then around at the trees and brush. “I think this is spring...-ish. Maybe. The battle was in summer, so eight years.”

  Once again Alex was disappointed, and he realized he’d hoped to see some action while he was here. But he expected to be long gone by 1314, so he probably wouldn’t be doing any more fighting.

  Supper finished, he began to feel fairly mellow and inebriated around the edges as he lounged against the pile of gear and horse tack while Lindsay used the linen cloth to wipe down the animal. Wine put a rosy glow on things, and now he minded less that he was not where he wanted to be. He wished Lindsay would finish what she was doing and come hang out by the fire. More than wanting to see her face, he longed for some company.

  A man in chain mail approached the fire. His right hand raised, he reminded Alex of an Indian wanting to powwow. He was dressed well, all things considered, and looked like he may have washed his face this evening. His hands, though, still bore a film of grease from dinner. Alex peered up at him and called for his squire. “Lindsay?”

  She shook out the cloth, folded it, and
came to the fire.

  “Lindsay, do me a favor and ask him what he wants.”

  She did, and Alex thought he understood some of the words. They were terribly archaic, but, by following Lindsay’s advice and drawing on his knowledge of root meanings, he found himself picking out more and more words.

  She reported, “His name is John Kirkpatrick. I think he’s asking about Hungary. Wants to know what it’s like.”

  Alex gestured for the visitor to sit, and chuckled. “Well, you don’t need me for this conversation. You just tell him whatever story you’ve made up.”

  Lindsay spoke to the man, who then sat cross-legged by the fire. Alex noted the other knight appeared unarmed, and took that as good faith he’d come in peace and expected to be well treated. He listened to Lindsay describe in Middle English mountains she’d never seen, and concentrated on figuring out exactly what she was telling their visitor.

  John spoke again, and Lindsay said to Alex, “He wants to know what moved you to come here.”

  “What did move me to come here?”

  “I think you came to Scotland to make your fortune among your father’s people, for there’s no place for you in Hungary.”

  “Sounds good. Tell him.”

  Lindsay did so.

  John replied, and Lindsay translated. “Apparently, your father, MacNeil of Barra, died last year.”

  Alex thought that over for a moment, and decided that was probably not a bad thing. It meant he’d never run into the guy he was spreading lies about. But he told Lindsay to say, “I’m sorry I’ll never meet him.”

  John nodded at that, and allowed it must be a terrible thing to never know one’s father.

  Relaxing by the fire, Alex and Lindsay learned from John that he was a knight in the company of his cousin, Roger Kirkpatrick, the same Roger who had ridden with Robert that day. John held a small amount of land, and was eager for hostilities to begin in order to increase his fortune by plunder and glory. Alex was brought to mind of a hot-shot pilot just out of flight training, who could hardly wait to get into combat. Except that John appeared much older than Alex. His lined face, even in an era where people aged quickly and died young, showed a maturity that didn’t match his words. Alex found it disquieting.