Free The Passionate Brood by Margaret Campbell Barnes

fool of him because they knew he hadn’t a dog’s chance. Young Blondel, quick to cover his discourtesy, saved the blossom from an impatient hoof and handed it up to him.
    Trumpets blared and de Barre bellowed a challenge. With a vicious spur he urged his stallion to the attack. And still the tall Norman stared rather incredulously at the dusty petals in his mailed palm.
    “Oh, hurry, hurry!” breathed Berengaria.
    Richard looked up then and grinned reassuringly. So it was true. Someone wanted him to win. The slender rose girl with the kind eyes who looked as if she had walked straight out of the lovely Provencal legends his mother used to tell. He leaned to Blondel for his shield, and the Spanish sunshine glinted on the gold leopards snarling across its blood-red surface. Like a lean, crouching leopard himself, he balanced his lance to get some favourite grip, then clapped down his vizor and charged.
    Towards him in a cloud of dust thundered his man. Even to Richard’s optimistic mind it looked as if such a mountain of steel and muscle must mow him down. “God help me not to disappoint that rose girl!” he prayed, swerving in time to take a glancing blow that, at full force, would have felled an ox. The force of it shook his confidence. This was the real thing. “Just because I’m supposed to be pretty good at home—” he thought, picturing his pride humbled in the dust before all this assembly of international sportsmen. King Sancho’s shout of “Well saved!” helped to steady him.
    As he wheeled his horse, Richard overheard a critic by the barrier say, “Hopelessly outclassed in weight and experience, of course, but he has youth and speed…” Acting on the hint, he used both to forestall by the fraction of a second each cunning ruse of his opponent. The Frenchman no longer fought contemptuously. In the second encounter he paid Richard the compliment of fighting furiously. He had seen a favour flung by a girl whose high birth had put her out of his own reach, and he was out to kill.
    But Richard’s eyes had gone light with the lust of battle, his brain cold as ice. He settled closer in the saddle to enjoy the one kind of game at which he was master. The spectators began to shout wildly each time he dodged death, but he was no longer conscious of them. Concentration had come back to him. His whole world was whittled down to one arena where two horsemen wheeled and thrust. Yet, fantastically enough, part of his mind was back in England where he had practised these very strokes beside the placid Thames. If only he could believe himself back there, delivering them as coolly and unhurriedly as he had then, he felt that he might win. It was Robin’s voice—a thin, controlling memory—that gave him patience and precision now. “Wait, man—wait! Any fool can strike. It’s choosing the moment that counts.” And then Robin himself—part of the placid river and the sturdy oaks—showing him that clever counter-thrust. “Let the other fellow go all out. And now —when he has over-ridden himself—”
    In each encounter Richard’s timing was perfect. The intoxication of success was upon him. He felt the crowd with him at last. A lovely crowd, appreciative of all the finer points, and generous in praise. His famous adversary was tiring. Past the peak of his prime and a gross liver, de Barre must have realised that he could not stay another round against such fitness. He came on like a maddened bull, blind with rage. Now—now was the moment. Richard stood in the stirrups and drove his lance home with all his strength.
    Berengaria covered her face with her hands. She could not bear the sight of blood. She heard a crescendo of hoof beats, the crash of steel and splintering wood. A sibilant intake of breath passed like the rustle of stiff ripe corn across the crowd. The silence that followed was split by a man shouting hoarsely, “My God, de Barre is in the dust!”
    “Only his armour saved him!” chanted the