Chapter Four
Four
There was an air of hysteria at Dunstable that had existed long before anyone cared to paint the Leclair sigil on their face and beg for Bridget’s signature.
The tiltyards there regularly hosted knights of note, and the thought that at any moment you might turn a corner and bump into a living legend or a rising star gave everybody the jitters.
Bridget had been the same the first time she’d competed, sixteen and feeling like she was a child in her father’s armor, despite the fact that everything had been perfectly crafted to fit her frame.
She’d gone to sign up, and on her way out of the administrative tent had passed Sirs Leonard and Bowen, one golden-haired and one raven, talking to each other in confidential tones, Sir Leonard’s hand on Sir Bowen’s shoulder.
She’d tried not to stare, but it had been hard.
Sir Leonard had been around five-and-twenty then, pretty with an easy smile, rising through the ranks as if he’d been launched by trebuchet; Sir Bowen was already the favorite on the circuit, a little older and steadier, classically handsome, loved by all (but especially women of middle age).
To hear them in casual conversation, to be close enough to see the long, raised halberd scar on Sir Bowen’s russet neck and the oiled gloss of Sir Leonard’s long, flaxen hair …
It was enough to make Bridget duck her head and smile nervously, which felt like a wildly embarrassing display of emotion.
This year, they had both introduced themselves on Bridget’s first day in York, at the start of the season.
Sir Bowen, a sensitive soul who had tired of his celebrity, had immediately begun commiserating with her about the price of fame.
Sir Leonard was more likely to tut at both of them and shake his head, order another round of ales, and tell them to cheer up or go home, if it was so terribly hard to be beloved.
“Have you heard what everyone’s saying?” Sir Leonard said, appearing at Bridget’s side in the competitors’ tent, set up like a makeshift inn. He would not mention Bridget’s forfeit. Neither of them ever did.
“I try not to,” Bridget said, as the innkeeper handed her a flagon of weak ale.
“I know. You’re exceptionally honorable. I hope it’s not catching.”
“Leo,” Sir Bowen said in gentle reproof, appearing at Sir Leonard’s shoulder, inevitable. He was Welsh, every word he spoke pleasingly soft around the edges. “You wear your lack of principles like a feathered helm, when you should keep it hidden—”
“Like shameful hosen.” Sir Leonard smirked, delighted with himself, and Sir Bowen sighed and held up his fingers to order two drinks. The innkeeper, unable to hide his admiration, jumped to oblige. “Anyway. There’s a girl entering the lists.”
“A lady,” Sir Bowen corrected.
“No, Bow. A girl. She can’t be a day over sixteen. Little scrap of a thing, but Sir Emner said she rides like a demon. Some tolerant lord’s youngest daughter.”
“It’s thanks to you, you know,” said Sir Bowen, giving Bridget’s arm a gentle shove.
Bridget took a sip of ale, and tried to take stock of how she felt.
There probably should have been a sense of pride in there somewhere, but she was finding herself strangely numb to good news these days.
Sir Leonard said she was jaded; that she had run at full speed through emotions that normally took years to take root, from bright-eyed young ingénue to battle-worn curmudgeon, but Bridget didn’t feel particularly grumpy. Just … tired.
Sir Leonard clapped both Bridget and Sir Bowen on the backs, slightly too hard. “Make haste, sad trouts. She’s up next—I want to watch.”
“The plural of ‘trout’ is ‘trout,’” Sir Bowen said, thanking the innkeeper as he accepted their drinks from his trembling hands.
Sir Leonard shook his head. “Good God, Bowen. This is just the sort of thing I’m talking about. Concerning yourself with plurals is trout behavior.”
Neil was watching already, in the stands reserved for competing knights, and moved over so that they could join him against the barrier.
Bridget hated doing this; preferred to watch from some shadowy corner, where every eye in the place wouldn’t flick constantly over to her, the crowd’s excitement magnified by the fact that she was standing next to two genuine tourney legends.
The marshal announced a Sir Riaz Zaman and a Lady Joan Baker.
Bridget couldn’t tell if she was imagining that everyone in the stands turned in unison to look at her, to gauge her reaction to another armored maiden, Bridget still the first in England but no longer the only.
It was easy to keep her face neutral. She felt nothing at all as Lady Joan, a short, freckled girl with pale skin and her hair barely confined in two messy brown plaits, readied herself for the trumpets.
She was good. Light in her seat, so responsive she was almost twitchy.
Her movements were completely unpracticed, all instinct, and her instincts were good.
Sir Zaman was slight, and they were relatively well-matched; neither competitor had been unseated by the end of the rounds, but she’d made the most contact, and so the bout was hers.
The crowd had mostly decided to ignore her. There was half-hearted applause mingled with loud chatting as she rode away. Bridget supposed that was progress, compared to her early days competing. Better than being egged. The smell stuck around for days.
“Well, hell,” said Sir Leonard. “You ought to go and find her, Leclair. Tuck her under your bicep, treat her to some sage wisdom.”
Bridget watched as Lady Joan dismounted, handing her lance off to her squire, who looked at least a decade her senior.
She’d been told, once, by a more seasoned knight, that problems arose in the tilt when one was injured and began to anticipate blows. You would brace for impact, flinch away from the lance, trying to protect yourself from a now-familiar hurt.
Lady Joan was so fresh, pain was probably nothing more than a story people told her, a cautionary tale that knights were unwilling to heed.
Bridget shook her head. “She needs no wisdom I can offer.”
“So you’re out of the tourney?” Sidney said, taking a very large and wet bite of turkey leg. “You can’t just have another whack at it?”
At his elbow, Lady Agnes winced. They made for a strange pair, Sidney all tanned brawn and rough edges; Agnes fair, fine-boned, and genteel.
Technically, Bridget hadn’t invited either of them to Dunstable, but she had invited Elaine the junior cook and Adah the falconer—or had at least not told them to stay away when Elaine sent a very long and rambling letter that translated into a request to visit—and Sidney and Agnes had decided to tag along for the ride.
Bridget should have warned them off. She’d hoped they might simply forget to come.
The point had been to watch her storm the lists. They had arrived one day too late to see her storm anything but the dinner buffet.
It was extravagant here, much to Sidney’s delight, a large and airy canvas tent filled with wooden benches for the competitors to eat their fill.
There was clean, sweet straw and sawdust underfoot, enormous carafes of ruby wine on every table, platters overflowing with lightly charred meat and bright roast veg.
“Fitzgilbert, do you want me to explain the word ‘forfeit’ to you again?” Adah said, taking a swollen tomato from Sidney’s plate and popping it into her mouth.
Her hair was freshly shaven, the well-worked muscles shifting under her mahogany skin as she rebuffed Sidney’s attempt to retaliate. The two of them seemed very familiar.
“They go to the inn together,” Elaine said in Bridget’s ear, with her usual startling prescience, blue eyes wide under the mousy shag of her fringe, “and he helps her pick up ladies. Scores of inns. Bushels of ladies.”
“Right,” said Bridget, hiding her disquiet behind her goblet. Of course life had gone on back at Camelot without her, and her friends were now friends with Gwen’s friends. Wasn’t that nice.
“S’not bushels,” Adah said, smiling. “Bunches, maybe. I’m very popular.”
Bridget didn’t doubt it. She’d been sparring with Adah since they were preteens giddily united by their shared secret; Adah was as able a swordswoman as she was a heartbreaker, although both of these talents had always taken a back seat to her love of the falcons she cared for in the mews.
Sidney lounged on the bench, one arm slung carelessly over Agnes’s shoulder until she pointedly shoved it off. “What can I say? It’s a vocation … a calling. Can’t let it go to waste just because I’m betrothed and Art is…”
“On sabbatical,” Agnes supplied.
“Exactly.”
“Sabbatical?” Bridget said, thinking of the Arthur Delacey she’d met last summer, annoying and beautiful and with a glint in his eye that said he was probably about to do something that was illegal in all thirty-nine counties of England.
He’d been different by September—dimmed, somewhat—but they all had.
There was a letter somewhere in the bottom of Bridget’s trunk, pressed between quite a few other letters in the same hand, informing her that Gabriel and Arthur were still avoiding each other completely. She’d read it five times, but she hadn’t replied.
This new version of Bridget, who panicked and fumbled and overthought everything, had nothing to say. Nothing good to report, no funny stories to share from the road. She’d make up for it in person. Eventually.
Agnes was watching Bridget like she could read her mind. Bridget misliked that look. What had Gwen told her about Bridget’s recent silence? Nothing good, that was for certain.
Sidney discarded the ravaged turkey bone.
“He’s still heartbroken actually, but since he managed to get out of bed he’s been weirdly cheerful about it.
Keeps trying to get me to go on nature walks with him and look at nuts and stuff.
He’s actually read a book. I think he’s having some kind of breakdown. ”
“Sounds like he’s fine,” Bridget said, and Sidney laughed hollowly.
“Didn’t you hear me? He read a book. On purpose. He found a feather on the ground and told me I had to go to the library and look up what bird it came from for him, cos the library is enemy territory.”
“And did you?” prompted Elaine.
“Nah,” said Sidney. “I just told him it was from a white stork, and then it turned out they’re bloody extinct, and he got all excited and said we needed to tell someone. Luckily he gave that up. He wasn’t sure who’d care except the king.”
“Can’t he go back to his house in Maidvale instead of trying to avoid the king in his own castle?” asked Adah. “He’s lord of the manor now, with his dad in exile.”
“He says just thinking about it gives him a stomachache,” said Agnes.
“And thank goodness, because then Sidney would go too, and I’d have to stay at court without him until we’re married.
” Bridget tried not to get involved in the love lives of others, but the one thing she did know was that Agnes’s parents did not approve of Sidney Fitzgilbert.
“And if you two stop licking each other’s teeth for eight seconds,” Adah said solemnly, “you’ll both expire.”
Agnes wrinkled her nose, but Sidney smiled fondly down at her, obviously besotted in a way that made Bridget need to look away.
“We miss you,” Elaine said, reaching over to tap Bridget lightly on the knuckles. “If you’re done here, why don’t you come back to Camelot for a spell?”
Bridget shook her head. “I’m not … ready, yet.”
Sidney squinted at her. “What the hell does that even mean?”
If only Bridget knew, she’d have told him.