The Queen raised a very sage eyebrow. “My gallant defender is the King’s son,” she said.
Blanche’s white hand went to her throat. “Jesu Christe!” she said-a true prayer and no blasphemy. “The Red Knight is the King’s by-blow?”
The Queen frowned.
Blanche cast her eyes down. “Apologies, your grace. I’m a laundress, not a courtesan-er-courtier.”
The Queen flashed her a smile. “You are no courtesan,” she said. “And you made me smile.”
The Red Knight clasped gauntlets with the Green Knight and then rode down the lists towards the Queen. The whole of the crowd, gentle and common, was on their feet.
Amicia watched a servant bring a cup. She needed no potent workings to know that the cup held poison. Or some poppy or other sleeping stuff.
There was no one around her to help her, and she knew of no way to affect this in the aethereal, without giving away her working. So she pushed past a pair of purple-clad guardsmen. Her path was eased by a sudden movement of the archbishop, who was looking at the red-clad lawyer.
“Just see to it,” the archbishop hissed.
His eyes went right past her, but his bulk opened a path until she was able to put her hip into the serving man. He didn’t fall, but the cup of wine soaked Du Corse.
She stepped back-her heart beating overtime. Heads turned, but every head looked at the serving man.
He was red in the face, protesting his innocence.
De Rohan struck him with the back of his hand, his two rings cutting furrows in the servant’s cheek. Amicia flinched.
The King shook his head vehemently.
De Vrailly stood his ground. “I am your Champion!” he said. “If I do not fight then you are admitting the charges are false.” His accented Alban carried.
“Free the Queen!” shouted a bold onlooker.
The cry was taken up.
The archbishop leaned over and whispered in the King’s ear.
The King turned. He was pale-but in control of his face.
The King stood straighter. “De Vrailly,” he said. “For what it is worth, I believe my wife is innocent. Will you still fight?”
De Vrailly spat. “Bah!” he cried. “I’ll prove her faithlessness and the murder of my friend D’Eu on this Red Knight.”
The archbishop made a signal.
The King shook his head. “Very well,” he said, with real regret.
De Vrailly began to walk down the steps to the lists.
The archbishop followed. As the King began to follow the archbishop to the lists, Amicia did her best to move along with him, an arm’s length away.
The man in red looked at her-right at her.
He was in the midst of a working. Magicking a silver chalice-a chalice of water.
He went back to his working, the traces of his fingers and his symbols leaving marks in the aethereal. She lacked the kind of training that would tell her what he was doing-another poison?
Suddenly his eyes came back to her-now wide with realization.
She had no idea what gave her away.
The Red Knight walked his horse to the base of the steps as if he had nothing to fear from the Galles or the purple soldiers waiting there. The marshal of the lists had beckoned him, and now stood with a sword in one hand and a set of gospels in the other. All eyes were on him.
Amicia moved a few inches closer to the King and the archbishop, and readied her shields.
The archbishop took the chalice, held it aloft, and began to pray loudly.
Most people fell silent-many fell on their knees, and Amicia joined them because it took her out of the sight line of the man in the scarlet hood. In front of her, a Gallish squire brought out de Vrailly’s magnificent war horse. The knight himself checked his girth and stirrups before turning and kneeling before the archbishop.
The Red Knight dismounted and knelt, too, a good sword’s length between himself and the Gallish knight.
The prayer came to an end.
The marshal went to the Red Knight. “Do you swear on your honour, your arms and faith, to fight only in a cause that is just, and to abide by all the law of arms in the list?”
The Red Knight didn’t open his visor, but his voice was loud. “I do,” he said.
The marshal went to de Vrailly. “Do you swear on your honour, your arms and your faith, to fight only in a cause that is just, and to abide by all the law of arms in the list?”
“I do,” de Vrailly said.
Both men rose.
“Stop!” roared the archbishop. He took the chalice. “The Red Knight is a notorious sorcerer. Have you any magical defence about you?” he shouted. “I accuse you! God has shown me!” And he flipped holy water from the chalice at the Red Knight.
It sparkled in the air-a brilliant lightshow of red and green and blue.
Amicia moved from her knees even as the crowd gasped.
The marshal frowned. “It is against the law of arms to bear anything worked with the arts into the lists,” he roared.
The Red Knight started back. He was on his feet-
The marshal struck him lightly with his mace of office. “You are barred from the lists,” he said.
Amicia heard the Red Knight grunt as if in pain, but she was already moving. She took the chalice from the archbishop’s hands as smoothly as if he was cooperating with her in a dance, and upended the contents over the kneeling Gallish knight even as she placed her own working-a true working-to make the water show anything hermetical. The man in the red hood had merely faked the effect with an illusion.
In front of five thousand people, de Vrailly glowed. If the Red Knight had sparkled with faery light, de Vrailly burned like a torch of hermeticism.
The flame of the holy water hitting de Vrailly was so bright that a hundred paces away, Wat Tyler had to turn his head to keep the dazzle from his eyes. He cursed as he lost his target.
The other Galles were speechless. Amicia stepped back-but the man in red saw her. “She-” he began.
And then he pursed his lips, looked at the archbishop, and said nothing.
The crowd was clamouring.
The marshal had not been bought or paid for-he struck de Vrailly with his mace. “You, too, are barred from the lists,” he said.
De Vrailly’s visor was up-and his face worked like a baby’s. He knelt there as if unable to move.
It was Du Corse who took charge. The crowd-both gentle and common-was restless. Commoners were beginning to challenge the lines of guards on the edge of the lists, and the twenty or so purple-liveried episcopal guards around the Queen were not looking either numerous or dangerous enough. He sent a page for his routiers and made a motion to his own standard bearer.
The archbishop was still stunned by the apparition of de Vrailly, the King’s Champion, suffused with a sticky green fire that could only mean a deep hermetical protection-cast, of all things, by the Wild. Satan’s snare.
In front of them, a line of knights appeared behind the Red Knight. A Green Knight put his hand on the Red Knight’s shoulder, and behind him was a giant of a man in a plain steel harness and a surcoat of tweed, and then another giant, this one blond, bearing the differenced arms of the Earl of Towbray.
The Green Knight stood forth.
“I will stand for the Queen,” he said. His voice carried.
At his back, Tom Lachlan raised his visor. “And I,” he said.
Ser Michael didn’t dismount, but he snapped his great helm off his head and let it hang from the buckle. “And I, your grace. My father is attainted, but I am not. There are many knights here to fight for your wife today, your grace. I am a peer of Alba. I demand justice.”
The Green Knight did not raise his visor. He merely saluted the marshal. “Try your holy water on me,” he said.
The marshal took the empty cup-and held it out to the archbishop.