‘And now you cannot even stop a simple cut to the head,’ Fiore said, stepping back.
Young Master Stapleton didn’t burst into tears. A lesser man might have.
I jumped up. ‘Eh, Fiore, give the boy a rest and let’s have another bout.’
Fra Peter gave me a slight nod, which was often his warmest sign of approbation.
Fiore was angry, feeling that he had failed, but he took three breaths — I told you, it was the summer of breathing — so he was outwardly calm, and we took our guards and engaged.
At the third or fourth pass, I got Fiore’s sword in a bind at the crossing, but I was so surprised at my little triumph that I didn’t move my hand correctly to place the blade on my cross guard, and got a nice cut across the back of my thumb even as I struck him lightly on the shoulder. Now, let me say, I had hit him before. He was not yet the master he is now, but it was a moment for personal rejoicing for me or Juan any time we landed a good blow.
He smiled and pointed his sword at my hand. ‘Another pair of gloves ruined. You need to fix that.’ He seemed to be ignoring that I had hit him. ‘You rely on your iron gauntlets. In a street fight, you could lose your thumb.’
Well, of course he was correct, and I had just ruined another pair of three-florin chamois gloves.
I consoled myself that I had the thread and needles to fix them up, if the bloodstains weren’t too bad. Gloves were expensive.
‘Let me have some exercise, Sir William,’ Fra Peter said. He nodded to me — we were all knightly courtesy when we had live swords in our hands, and I recommend such behaviour to any man-at-arms. Heightened awareness deserves heightened courtesy, eh?
Fra Peter began in a low guard, and Fiore began high. They met with a heavy crossing (I wouldn’t have risked such a heavy strike) and Fiore leaped forward to strike with his pommel — and Fra Peter passed back and took Fiore’s blade out of his hand as easily as a thief takes a purse on Cheapside.
Fiore grinned from ear to ear, while the rest of us clapped, and I discovered that I had Sister Marie behind me.
‘Show me that again,’ Fiore said.
Fra Peter grinned, suddenly one of us and very human indeed. ‘No, I think I need to have something on you, since you have youth and speed!’ But he relented, and began to demonstrate.
The laugh of it was that it was just like one of Fiore’s dagger defences — in effect, the pommel strike turned the mighty longsword into a dagger. We all began to learn it.
I noted Sister Marie moving her hands through the disarm.
She caught me looking and turned away, a hot flush on her cheeks.
I went back to practising the turning of the pommel with Juan. Miles just shook his head.
Fra Peter put an arm around Miles. ‘Just practice what you understand,’ he said.
Miles looked at the ground a moment. ‘I don’t understand anything,’ he said sullenly. I had never heard Miles be sullen. ‘My father’s master-at-arms says I am a very promising swordsman.’
Fiore looked at the younger man — they were, after all, only two years apart. ‘I’m sure you are, to a provincial knight in rainy England.’ He looked at us. ‘You saw what Fra Peter has just done to me? Yes? And just like that, I am disarmed and dead. Yes?’
Miles shook his head. ‘Yes.’
Fiore frowned. ‘You know what the worst fault of most knights is? The one that kills them?’
I wanted to hear this. So, it appeared, did Fra Peter. He stopped wrestling with Juan.
Stapleton shrugged. ‘They don’t listen?’ he said.
Fiore’s frown turned to a small smile. ‘That’s not bad. But no. It is that they think they are much better than they really are, and they are not careful. You have only one skin, Messire Stapleton. If you are careful with your blade, you can win many fights against men who should have killed you. Did you see what Fra Peter did to me? Really did?’
‘He turned your pommel strike,’ Stapleton said.
‘He used my arrogance against me,’ Fiore said. He smiled. ‘That’s how to win any fight.’
Behind me, Sister Marie laughed. ‘Women would rule the world,’ she said.
That was the day that I discovered that mild Sister Marie, the Latinist, was an accomplished swordsman. She fenced with Fra Peter after he had us secure all the views into the stable yard. She was tall for a woman, but had nothing like the muscle or the height of a belted knight, and her weapon was an arming sword, the sort of weapon I’d grown to manhood using with a buckler. I’d seen her with her sword and her buckler while we were crossing the bandit-infested passes east of Turin, but what of it? Most women who travelled had weapons, unless they were so rich as to have men-at-arms or so poor as to have only a dagger or an eating knife. Many nuns carried staffs or even cudgels to discourage rape and thievery.
Sister Marie moved like a snake. I had never seen anyone move as she moved. She leaned well forward, so that whichever foot was moving, her weight was out in front of her, and her sword led everything. She passed forward and forward, changing from guard to guard, and it was all alien to me, but like a lethal dance.
Fiore’s eyes shone. ‘This is very interesting,’ he said. ‘She appears to strike from out of measure, yet it is all deception. She dances forward offering a strada, but it is all a lie. She has no line. She engages where she wishes.’
It was not so very different from the sword and buckler of my youth except that we tended to circle, refusing to take a guard until our opponent crossed some invisible distance. Sister Marie flowed from one guard to another, sword over her left shoulder, down by her left hip, up over her head to turn Fra Peter’s cut, and then she was in at him, her little buckler over his sword arm. He wasn’t having that, and he spun and kicked her and she leaped — and giggled. And cut backhanded at his arm. He covered with his pommel high and the sword falling over his hands, blade pointed at the ground to the right, and struck crisply with both hands and she covered with her sword and her buckler, a move I knew well. I suspected that if he’d cut with all his force, he’d have opened her head; even as it was, her buckler moved.
Each of them tried to bind, but her sword, while quicker, was lighter, and as the edges bit into each other, Fra Peter turned her blade down and touched her very carefully on her forward leg.
She leaped back and saluted him and bowed.
‘Fra Peter, it is too seldom that I get to face a swordsman,’ she said.
He grinned. ‘And you a poor weak woman.’ He shook his head. ‘If I had to fight in a wool gown, I doubt I could do as well.’
She raised an eyebrow. ‘If you plan to pity me, perhaps I should just shave you.’ Her eyes glittered.
Fiore stepped forward. ‘May I have the pleasure of a bout?’ he asked.
She looked him up and down. ‘I have to copy letters,’ she said. ‘You must promise to be careful.’
He frowned. ‘Are you suggesting that I lack control?’ he asked.
She shrugged. ‘Messire, you have put a spear through Sir William’s cheek, cut his thumb, pinked Messire Juan, and worn the poor English squire to a rage.’
Fiore looked hurt. But he bowed.
Fiore was so tentative that she mastered the first cross and touched him on his sword arm. And then she turned her sword in the same wind as she had lost to Fra Peter and although she didn’t touch him, Fiore stepped back and bowed. ‘You might have hit me,’ he admitted.
‘Yes,’ she said, and stepped forward again, this time warding his guard with her buckler as she advanced.
Fiore lifted his weapon and struck her lightly on the side.
She stepped back and laughed. ‘Usually, after I hit a man twice in two crossings, he folds,’ she said.
Fiore frowned. ‘Why?’ he asked.
Fra Peter stepped between them. ‘Juan is waving. Sister, put up your sword before the university provost arrests us all. Fiore, she played you. From the moment she accused you of having trouble controlling your blade, she was controlling your actions.’