Free The Greatest Knight by Elizabeth Chadwick Page B

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