The armourer sat on a bench outside his workshop, making the most of the good March light. His tools were laid to hand and a shallow wooden bowl contained a coruscation of several hundred mail links. Another dish held masses of tiny rivets the size of pinheads. The armourer had been painstakingly inserting new links into the garment and closing each one by hammering in a rivet. Finished, he rose to his feet, shook out the mail shirt, and requested that William try it on over the quilted tunic he was wearing.
“Much better.” William nodded his approval as he flexed his arms and peered at the mended links in his armpit. The new rings were a shade darker than the old ones. There was another small patch of a different hue across the shoulder of the garment where the gaff had caught him at Drincourt. He wondered how much of the original would remain by the time he died. You could always tell the hardest fighters by the dappled patches of repair on their hauberks…the most fortunate too. Now all he had to do was wear it for a while to grow accustomed.
“I swear you live in that thing,” Salisbury remarked, pausing by the armoury on his way elsewhere.
William looked rueful. “I have to, the amount of battle we have seen these past few months.”
Salisbury nodded and turned his mouth down at the corners to show that William had a point. “You’ve earned your keep of late, I’ll give you that,” he admitted. “If you need new rings in your hauberk, it’s due to hard work, not gluttony.” His glance flickered to a platter occupied by a half-eaten pie and a substantial chunk of bread. William noticed the direction of his uncle’s gaze and said sheepishly, “I didn’t have time to dine in the hall.”
“You need make no excuses to me,” Salisbury laughed. “As long as you perform your duties to my satisfaction, what you eat and when is your own business. Do as you will.”
William drank a mouthful of wine from the cup beside the platter and turned sharply as a groom’s lad burst upon them.
“Messire Marshal, come quickly! Prince Henry’s up on Blancart in the tiltyard!” the youth panted.
William and Salisbury looked at each other and, with one accord, sprinted towards the sward, arriving in time to see the heir to England and Normandy white-faced, grimly determined, cantering Blancart towards the quintain. A lance wobbled under the boy’s arm. Through his anger and alarm, William noted that the Prince had about as much control of horse and weapon as a drunkard did of his senses. The wonder was that Blancart had not yet bucked him off into the mud. To run out and stop the boy on his approach to the quintain would cause more harm than good and William halted at the front of the gathering crowd. Princess Marguerite looked up at him, her expression filled with fear and guilt on her boy husband’s behalf.
“Don’t be angry,” she pleaded anxiously. “Henry didn’t mean to do it.”
“If Henry hadn’t meant to do it, Princess, he would not be riding at the ring on a warhorse worth a hundred marks without seeking my permission,” William said grimly.
Her voice continued to twitter and he shut it out, watching the lad, willing him not to make a mistake and bring both himself and the horse to grief. It was an act of God rather than any human design that Henry stayed on Blancart’s back as the stallion thundered towards the quintain post. Henry’s eyes were squeezed shut and his seat in the saddle was appalling. The stallion’s new-shod hooves churned clods of turf and his tail was swishing with that mingling of eagerness and irritation that William recognised with foreboding.
By rights, Henry should have missed the ring entirely, but the miracle continued as with more than his lifetime’s share of divine providence he succeeded in spearing the withy ring and riding on. As the stallion turned away from the tilt, Henry’s eyes opened and a beatific expression spread across his face. Features ablaze with triumph, he sought Richard in the crowd—a victor gloating at the vanquished.
William started forward and Henry’s attention turned. Fear and defiance constricted the elation, but it didn’t vanish entirely. The lad fixed William with an imperious stare, which William ignored. He would kneel to the King and the Queen and yield deference to the royal children in a formal situation. But this wasn’t a formal situation and young Henry had just broken the code of chivalry and needed teaching a lesson. However, before he could reach horse and boy and secure them both, Blancart gave an irritated buck. Henry was flung backwards, his spine striking the hard wood of the cantle. He dropped the lance, grabbed the reins in panic, and yanked on them. The stallion went wild, twisting, kicking, plunging. Prince Henry tried to hold on but he stood no chance for he was straddling a whirlwind. The inevitable moment arrived when he lost his grip, sailed from the saddle, and hit the ground with a breath-jarring thud. Blancart bolted, punctuating his gallop with a series of violent bucks and kicks.
Salisbury ran to the Prince who was bleeding from the nose and mouth. William chased after the agitated stallion and managed to seize the trailing rein before the horse could put his hoof through the loop, fall, and break a leg. Speaking firmly and slowly, standing side on, William slid his hands up the rein until he was close enough to grip the cheek strap. He laid his palm to the sweating, trembling neck, grabbed a fistful of mane, and swung into the saddle. Blancart shuddered, but with a familiar solid weight across his back rather than a child’s flimsiness, he steadied. Using knees and thighs, putting no pressure on the reins, William rode over to the fallen prince, his heart filled with dread. “Christ, let him be all right,” he prayed, crossing himself. A crowd had gathered around the boy, including the senior royal nurse, Hodierna, who was weeping and wringing her hands.
Salisbury looked up as William arrived. Henry was sitting up, hugging his body, his face twisted with pain. Closer now, William could see that the blood in his mouth was from a bitten lip and the nosebleed had already stopped.
“Bruised ribs, I would say,” Salisbury said. “He bounced well. Is the horse all right?”
“Hard to tell, my lord. It hasn’t done his temper much good.” William rubbed his hand reassuringly along Blancart’s neck and crest and felt the horse shiver under his touch.
“Stop panicking, woman, he’s not dead,” Salisbury snapped at Hodierna as she continued to wail. He gripped Henry’s shoulder and squeezed hard. “What do you think you were doing?”
The boy gasped. His eyes were glassy with the tears he would not let fall. “I wanted to ride a real destrier. Richard said I couldn’t do it, but I did.” He raised his chin, suddenly defiant.
“And might have died. If that horse is injured through your stupidity, you will owe Messire William the price of its tending or replacement. A King’s heir or not, you’re a young fool!”
Henry compressed his lips. Clearly in pain, he rose to his feet and gingerly turned, clutching his ribs, to face William. “I am sorry, Messire Marshal. He is such a fine horse that I could not help myself.”
“Then you have much to learn about self-discipline,” growled Salisbury.
William’s heart was still pounding in reaction to the incident, but something about the lad’s manner, the look in the eyes, the set of the mouth, softened his anger. He understood the emotions: the need to prove oneself before one’s peers and siblings; the need itself when one was thirteen and raised among sharp swords and valuable horses. “Lord Henry has learned from his prank the painful way,” William said with a warning look at the boy. “I don’t think he’ll be attempting it again?”
Henry stared at William through his fringe and mutely shook his head.
Salisbury grunted and looked severe. “You’re getting off lightly,” he told Henry. “Best go and get your bruises seen to.” He gave the boy to Hodierna, which was in itself something of a humiliation, for Henry saw himself as being almost too old for a nurse these days, especially one who was making as much fuss as an old hen. The Earl dispersed the crowd with a wave of his arm, but with a sudden lunge caught Richard back by the scruff. “You saw what happened to your brother,” he warned, shaking him like a terrier with a rat. “Don’t ever think of doing the same.”
“I won’t.” Richard put his hands together like an angel. However as soon as Salisbury released him he added cheekily, “For a start, I wouldn’t fall off.” He was gone in a duck and a rapid flash of heels.
Salisbury dug his fingers through his hair. “Young devil,” he muttered, but there was reluctant humour in his eyes.
“You let him off lightly too,” William said.
“True,” Salisbury replied, “but they’ve still got to run the gauntlet of their mother, and there’ll be no mercy from her.”
