His lady leaned over to me and ran her hand over Emile’s somewhat frayed blue favour. ‘This belongs to your lady?’ she asked. She was the first woman to ask about it.
‘Yes,’ I said, or something equally short. I was not at my best; a pinnacle of knightly fame, and I was reduced to monosyllables. Especially in Latin.
She glowed with satisfaction. ‘You love her?’ she asked.
I grinned. ‘Always,’ I said.
‘But she is not anyone here?’ Kunka asked.
I shook my head. ‘No. She is very far away. She is from Savoy.’
‘Like those gentlemen who cannot take their eyes off you?’ my Bohemian gentleman asked. ‘They are all Savoyards. From Geneva.’
Well, I was dull-witted, but not so very dull-witted as that. ‘Yes, she is from Savoy. But not, I think, with any of those gentlemen.’
Kunka put a warm hand on mine. ‘And your lady … will you be faithful to her tonight? With every girl at court ready to throw herself in your lap?’
I was looking for something courtly to say, but her eyes smouldered.
‘Listen, Englishman. I am the very Queen of Love of this tourney, and I challenge you as you are a knight to remember your lady.’ So the smoulder was not lust, but anger.
I bowed at the table. ‘Lady, you are so wholly in the right that I can only swear on my honour to abide your challenge.’
She smiled, and her knight smiled.
Later in the evening, when my sword was still undrawn, and I was surrounded — indeed, I was cornered as thoroughly as a stag of fourteen tines is backed into a cliff by hounds and hunters; there I was, alone, with fifteen women about me. Their bodies were young and beautiful, their eyes open and shining. Their hair was uncovered, delicious to smell. Nerio had stood by my side all too briefly, engaged one fair maid in conversation and taken her hand, leading her away to discuss poetry, or so he claimed. Fiore was nowhere to be seen. My Savoyards were not even in the same hall, and I suspect I’d forgotten them.
Kunka appeared at my side, and all the ladies bowed — she was, after all, the Queen of Love for the tourney. Her husband unfolded a stool and she sat.
‘Come, Sir William!’ she said, and her smile was as wanton as any of the girls about me. ‘Choose one of my handmaids to sit closest to you.’
I bowed. I was right willing to choose, and chose a young woman with jet-black hair and lips so red I wanted to see if they had paint on them. I didn’t think they did. She blushed to her hair and into her gown, but she sat by me.
Kunka smiled. The wantonness was gone, replaced by a harder edge, and I thought that perhaps she was also a mother; she knew how to give orders as well as take them.
‘Now, Sir William, welcome to the Court of Love.’ Kunka laughed, and squeezed her husband’s hand.
All the maids sighed. There were some poisonous looks for my raven-tressed choice. ‘Before we dance, Sir William will amuse us by telling us of his Lady. He loves a lady par amour, and wears her favour on his shoulder.’
The maids looked abashed. I confess I was abashed myself, so soon had I forgotten her challenge and my promise.
I thought of Emile, and in truth — oh, this cuts me like a Turk’s sword — I had trouble recalling her face. So many years. I could see her arrogant husband well enough in my mind’s eye, but her face swam in a haze of associations.
But Kunka had every right to ask, as Queen of Love. And she was setting me a penance as well as recognising me as the knight who had won the prize, and I was being challenged. Chivalry is more than hitting men with a sword. Chivalry is there in every dealing with a woman, from the bath girl to the Queen of Love.
I thought of Father Pierre’s strictures about the farm girl, and it made me blush, and the maids giggled.
‘The lady I love must remain locked in my heart,’ I said. ‘But I will say that she is beautiful as — as …’ Once started, I could not be seen to stop, and yet no fresh image leaped to my head. A summer’s day? A pox on that one. A flower? A rose?
I still had my longsword in both hands. I raised it so that it formed a cross. ‘As beautiful as this sword — as beautiful to see, and yet as beautiful in her soul, strong as the steel and-’
‘Your lady is as beautiful as a sword?’ Kunka asked.
They were laughing at me.
I looked at the Bohemian knight, who shook his head and left me to my fate. ‘Perhaps I must beg you to understand how beautiful I find this sword,’ I said, hoping to win a smile, but the women all rolled their eyes and prodded one another with their elbows.
‘Is she red and gold, this lady?’ Kunka asked.
‘No, blue and white like snow and the sky,’ I answered, too quickly. Emile’s arms were blue and white. I thought of her that way — I had been too open.
Kunka smiled, though. ‘Now that was prettier, Sir Knight, and I think it possible that you are more than a boor. No more swords. Tell us what it is about her that won your heart, so that we poor women may strive to emulate that and rise in your opinion.’
‘Courage,’ I said.
‘Ma foi,’ Kunka said ‘That is a fine thing for a knight to love in a lady. And far better than comparing her beauty to a sword. Let me tell you, monsieur, when you compare me to a sword, all I hear is that I am sharp and pointy.’ She laughed, and all the maids laughed with her. ‘But when you offer me courage as a woman’s virtue, then I feel hope that a knight might see me as more than a leman and a mother. Can you tell us of her courage?’
I thought of her coming to my room in Normandy, during the siege, dealing with her husband …
I thought hard, wanting to avoid revealing anything, and yet caught up in the game that was courtly love. And the girls were watching me differently, now, and in the distance, I heard the music begin.
‘It is not that she fears nothing. It is that, when fearing, she acts despite her fears. Ask any man-at-arms where courage lies. It is not the fearless knight who wins our respect, but the one who, full of fear, carries on.’ I shrugged, to end my little sermon.
Sir Herman gave me a small nod of appreciation.
Kunka put her hand on mine. ‘As Queen of Love, I say to all that you are a true knight and worthy of your lady. Now I love her courage too.’ She rose, and I kissed her hand, and she made a motion to the maids to attend her. ‘It is my express command that none of you may dance with Sir William more than once. Or any other thing. Does anyone doubt my word?’
She swept away from me with a smile, having made sure that I would sleep alone.
But, like many of my other teachers, Fiore and Father Pierre and Sir Peter and Arnaud and more, she showed me something about myself.
Why is it that there is always so much to learn?
By our Lady! I danced three times, once with the Lady Kunka, and then, at last, I walked out under the stars, out the great gilded doors of the King of Poland’s great hall, and into the cool of a Polish August night. I thought I was alone, but Fiore was at my shoulder.
He grinned like a boy. ‘The sword?’ he asked.
He was as eager as I.
We walked off into a garden, the two of us like secret lovers, and stumbled in the dark until we found what we sought: a little light from a lantern, probably left by real lovers earlier in the evening. And then I drew the sword from her red leather-and-wood scabbard, and her blade shimmered like Arabian silk in the candlelight.
She was broader than any blade I’d ever owned, as broad as a lady’s wrist, and even broader. She had a different taper from most swords, and a flatter cross-section than the other longswords I’d owned, flatter and shorter. Had I seen her in a bladesmith’s stall, I would not even have asked her down to put her hilt in my hand.
Listen: once I took a lady — we were both the worse for wine — who was, let us say, less than beautiful. Dumpy, short, a little overweight, I thought in my pride and lust. But when I undressed her, I found her body as beautiful as Venus herself. As that lady, so with the sword.