The Badger Knight

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  NORTHERN ENGLAND, 30 OCTOBER 1346

  MAP

  CHAPTER THE FIRST: In Which I Sneeze, Wheeze, and Curse Much

  CHAPTER THE SECOND: In Which We Hear of Battle!

  CHAPTER THE THIRD: In Which I Dislike Good Aunt, Even More So than Aforementioned

  CHAPTER THE FOURTH: In Which I Truly Despise Bessie, Good Aunt’s Ox

  CHAPTER THE FIFTH: In Which I Write Recipes While Hugh Handles Bessie (and Bess)

  CHAPTER THE SIXTH: In Which Hugh Is Besotted with “Bessie” — My Cousin, Not the Ox

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTH: In Which I Purchase New Boots, Although I Can’t Fill Them

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTH: In Which I Learn My Fate

  CHAPTER THE NINTH: In Which Hugh Runs Away to Fight the Pagan Scots and Forbids Me to Follow

  CHAPTER THE TENTH: In Which I Pay No Heed to Hugh

  CHAPTER THE ELEVENTH: In Which I Am on My Own

  CHAPTER THE TWELFTH: In Which I Break New Ground … or It Breaks Me

  CHAPTER THE THIRTEENTH: In Which I Am Known as a Master Archer

  CHAPTER THE FOURTEENTH: In Which I Plummet from Master to Scoundrel

  CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH: In Which I Search for Hugh

  CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH: In Which I Join a Gang

  CHAPTER THE SEVENTEENTH: In Which I Help the Gang

  CHAPTER THE EIGHTEENTH: In Which I Find Sanctuary

  CHAPTER THE NINETEENTH: In Which I Smell a Rat

  CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH: In Which I Learn of Chess, Maps, Mr. Ockham, and Good and Evil

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY–FIRST: In Which I Meet a Knight!

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY–SECOND: In Which I Become a Knight, Almost

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY–THIRD: In Which I Hide in a Latrine

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY–FOURTH: In Which I See My First Battle

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY–FIFTH: In Which I Have an Unexpected Encounter

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY–SIXTH: In Which I Find Out about Hugh

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY–SEVENTH: In Which I Decide Hugh Is an Addlepated Fool

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY–EIGHTH: In Which I Wonder If I’m the Addlepated Fool

  CHAPTER THE TWENTY–NINTH: In Which I Become a Scot!

  CHAPTER THE THIRTIETH: In Which We Have a New Camp and a New Camper

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY–FIRST: In Which We Face Robbers

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY–SECOND: In Which Hugh and Bess Find Each Other … and There Is Kissing

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY–THIRD: In Which I Go to Battle

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY–FOURTH: In Which I Learn What Happened to Hugh

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY–FIFTH: In Which We Hatch a Plan to Save Donald

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY–SIXTH: In Which I Become a Monk, Sort Of

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY–SEVENTH: In Which I Try to Save Donald

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY–EIGHTH: In Which Donald Saves Me

  CHAPTER THE THIRTY–NINTH: In Which We Are Both One-Handed Musicians

  CHAPTER THE FOURTIETH: In Which We Run Straight into the Enemy

  CHAPTER THE FORTY–FIRST: In Which We Cross Hadrian’s Wall

  CHAPTER THE FORTY–SECOND: In Which I Decide My Future

  CHAPTER THE FORTY–THIRD: In Which My Journey Is Just Beginning

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  GLOSSARY

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE ARCHERS, THE PAGAN SCOTS would pour over the border and kill us all. It’d be worse than the plague that took my mother and sister eight years ago. Good Aunt says the plague should’ve taken me because I’m so useless. Father says I may be different but I have as much right to live as anyone. And, he says, when I find my calling, I’ll prove it.

  I’ve already found my calling. I’m an archer. I’ve been practicing since we lost a third of the village in that plague. Back then, I was a puny, pale, sickly boy, barely five years old. Now I’m almost thirteen … and still puny, sickly, and pale as milk. A few people say being tiny and white as an angel is a good omen, but far more say I’m evil, that I was the cause of that plague, and that they see the devil in my eyes. If they do, I didn’t put him there. I’m no devil. Nor am I a tiny angel. Underneath my odd-looking outside I’m just me. Adrian. A boy — well, almost a man. They’ll see.

  I pick up my bow. The ash wood feels firm, yet flexible, in my hand. The weight is perfect. I made it myself, mostly. It’s a precision weapon. It’s not near as big as a longbow, of course, but I can dart in and out and reload faster than the five or six times per minute a longbow archer can handle.

  I draw back my bow and aim. My left eye is weaker so I only use my right and, on a sunny day like today, I spread dirt under my eyes to cut the glare so I don’t have to squint as much. I may be called Badger, but I can hit my target every time.

  King Edward would be happy to have me fighting alongside him. He won the battle of Crécy last month because of expert archers like me. There hasn’t been such a victory since the battle of Sluys in 1340, but I was only six then so I wouldn’t have been much use. At Crécy, though, I like to imagine what I could’ve done…. Squinting, I see just where my arrow will hit the French soldier who tries to kill our king. He doesn’t see me. Silently, I release my arrow and watch it fly, hitting its mark, piercing it.

  I imagine the cheers from the whole army. “Adrian of Ashcroft has saved us!”

  But a real voice booms in the distance. “Adrian!”

  “Coming, Father!” Quickly, I pull my arrow from its target, which, in truth, is only the birch tree I use for target practice. I hide my bow and arrows in its hollow trunk.

  Father still doesn’t know I practice archery, but he knows what a fine shot I am. And he knows how much I want to be apprenticed to the bowyer and make bows myself. Everyone in the village says the bowyer is a good, fair, and honest man. That’s true, but he’s also my father.

  Oh, I know it’s unusual to be apprenticed to your own father, but since he won’t send me away — he’s so overprotective! — what better fit is there? And I know he thinks I’m small and weak, in body as well as mind, thanks to Good Aunt, but I’m not wasting any more of my time at that stupid school!

  Fleeing the woods, down the hill, I see Father standing outside our shop. I run as fast as I can, tripping on a tree root. Though I keep from falling, my arms flail as wildly as a goose’s wings.

  Father’s shoulders droop. His head drops, too, as I speed up to show him how able I really am, although my chest squeezes and the wheezing starts.

  Panting, I stumble in front of him. “Yes — Father.” I bend over and clutch my knees as I gasp for air. I sound like a yelping dog. Father looks away. As always, he gives me time for the air to return to my lungs.

  I try to slow my breathing as I listen to Peter the journeyman inside the shop sorting through the arrow tips, finding just the right one to attach to a shaft. Father trains Peter to make arrows, although bow making is his prime profession. When I raise my head and squint past Father, I see Peter hold up a pointed tip. The sun streams through the door and glints on the steel, and I want to be where Peter is right now, doing something useful, not like me.

  I stand up as tall as possible and look at Father, eagerly, because maybe he’ll let me carve an arrow or attach the point, the true harbinger of death. And maybe he’ll finally realize I’m ready to be his apprentice. He’s a master bowyer, the only one for miles around. It’s a kingly calling. I await his word as if he were the king himself.

  “Adrian, I need you to collect goose feathers.”

  I hear Peter snicker and I imagine the entire village snickering.

  “But, Father, that’s child’s work!” I realize how much like a child I sound and try to sound more l
ike a man. “Wouldn’t you rather I help you with the bow making?”

  “The bow is nothing without the arrows.”

  “Then the shafts, Father, let me make those!”

  His eyes darken at my insolence even though he knows that I can carve a stick into a great weapon — and shoot it as well as any man. Still he doesn’t look at me. He dare not, lest he see Mother in my face, and that’s too painful. I don’t blame him. He clears his throat. “You know what Good Aunt says.”

  Father is a man of few words, but “Good” Aunt more than makes up for him. She has badgered him near to death with her story that I’m too sick and addlepated to be his apprentice. But I’m only sick and clumsy around her because I want to be elsewhere — anywhere that’s away from her. And I have no skill with a plow, but that doesn’t mean I have no skill with a bow. Still, she has poisoned Father’s brain as badly as she has poisoned Uncle’s. Or maybe in Uncle’s case it’s the ale.

  “Adrian!”

  I jump. “S-sir?”

  “The feathers,” he says simply, but his eyes tell me that he has been watching me and is all the more convinced that I’m a sickly simpleton.

  “Father, I —”

  “Whist, go now. And,” he adds quietly, “wipe the dirt from under your eyes.”

  Peter hears him, though, because he starts chuckling. He thinks my poor eyesight is amusing.

  Father whirls on him. “Peter!” His voice is as piercing as an arrow. He cannot stand for people to make fun of my weaknesses. Somehow, his defending me all the time only makes me feel worse, as if he believes me too weak to take care of myself.

  When I’m out of earshot, I mutter, “God’s bones!” and worse curses as well, anything that won’t get me struck down by the good Lord himself. Truly, I’m not angry with Him but with Father and my aunt, the wretched woman who plants such evil thoughts in his head. I only say “Good” Aunt since Father thrashed me for the other name I called her. It was but a shortened form of her full name, Hellewyse. The first syllable describes her well enough.

  I walk slowly, ready to live up to the name of ill addlepate if my only role is to be goose-feather collector. I’d rather wander the countryside. Become a juggler or a tumbler. Surely then people would respect me. But I’m more like the baited bear, tethered to a rock while folks laugh and dogs bite at me until there’s nothing left. I drag my worn boots toward the north end of the village, where the water attracts the geese and their wretched feathers. I feel useless.

  All my life I have heard of Ailwin the Useless, although I never met him. He died the week I was born, which is why most in my village believe that I am to take his place, especially upon seeing my tiny size and odd looks. Ailwin the Useless had a short leg, a hunchback, and one arm that wouldn’t work. Also, he was blind. I am nothing like that, but people still say that being useless is my destiny.

  If Father won’t let me be a bowyer then the only other thing I can do well is shoot an arrow, so I have to be a soldier. Oh, I can read and write better than any of the boys at school, but I think it’s a worthless activity. I pretend I’m slow because Bryce wants to be the top scribe, so he thrashes me if I look smarter than he does. And how many scribes does one village need? In truth, who would hire me for any trade? At worst, I am a bad omen. At best, I am useless. So I will end up like Ailwin the Useless, who begged for food and scraped manure off the reeve’s boots just so he’d be allowed to stay in the village, although he was little better off than Thomas the leper.

  It is not much of a life.

  Father says, Don’t worry, Adrian, for I will always take care of you.

  What I want to say to him is this: You can’t always take care of me because, someday, you will be gone, and Good Aunt wants nothing to do with me, so what will become of me then?

  And even more, I want to say this: I don’t want to be taken care of. I want to take care of myself. I want to be a man.

  But instead I simply say, Thank you, Father, because I know that’s what he wants to hear. It always makes him smile. I suppose he feels that he couldn’t save my mother and sister so at least he can protect me.

  “Oy, you dolt!” a man yells, and I see it’s Uncle, in the field to my right. He’s sweating under the effort of making Bessie move. A more stubborn, odiferous ox I have never met, but she’s Good Aunt’s pride and joy. They’re two of a kind. I skulk past, lest Uncle decide I should help him. Sometimes it’s useful to be slight and pale. I do cast a curse at Bessie, however. I’ve been trodden on too many times by that stinking beast.

  As I round the path, a man on horseback rides up the hill at a fast trot, looking left to the alehouse and right to some of the village houses. I stop. He’s an unusual sight. The man has a full head of brown hair although he’s as old as Father. His britches are leather and his jacket is fine and looks soft as moss. And it’s scarlet.

  He stops his horse and startles a bit when he looks down at me. I realize I still have the dirt under my eyes, but it’s too late to get rid of it now. At least my hood is up so he can’t see how white my hair is.

  He speaks quickly. “Boy, do you know where the bowyer resides?”

  I can’t help but grin. “Yes, sir! That man is my father!”

  “You are right to be proud. Point me in the direction.”

  I turn and point behind me. “It’s half a mile, on the right, sir.”

  He nods and slaps his reins, but the horse refuses to move. The man sighs and stands in his stirrups, and soon I hear and see why. His horse’s piss steams the air. It’s not cold out but the horse must be hot from a long ride.

  When the horse is done, the man takes his seat and waves to me. “Perhaps when you’re a big lad, you can be apprenticed to a bowyer.”

  I feel the steam come out of me like his horse’s piss. I’m already old enough to be apprenticed. Soon, just after Michaelmas, I’ll be thirteen. But I still collect goose feathers because Father says it’s a skill which only I have, to find the feathers that come from one side of the goose for one side of the arrow and feathers from the other side of that same goose to balance the arrow so it veers not to the right nor to the left but straight so as to meet its mark and kill a man.

  That may be true, but collecting goose feathers with boys half my age, and even girls, makes me a laughingstock. I may not be much larger than the little boys, but most in my village have known me since birth and know me to be twelve — maybe ten or eleven if their memory is as short as my size — but not six, like the giggling scalawags who point at me and laugh. I try my best to ignore them, but it’s as easy to ignore Thomas the leper with his bell, and the screams and mayhem that accompany him.

  I stomp off, directly into a pile of dung, most likely left by Bessie herself. I curse, loudly. It seems, lately, what I do best. I try to cheer myself by jumping over piles of Bessie’s dung, pretending to be an archer on the battlefield, leaping over the bodies I have slain. I carry my longbow and all fear me. No arrow can slay me. No man can —

  A heavy object hits my head and I fall face-first and slide in ox dung. It stinks badly but at least it’s soft and breaks my fall. Beside me lies the piece of oak branch that hit my head.

  I hear the laughter of Bryce and William and Warren, like an evil king and his entourage. Before I can rise, I feel a large foot come down on the side of my head. I hear Bryce’s laughter up close, the swine. William and Warren, his rotten little piglets, take turns kicking me. “Badger! Badger!” they shout because of the dirt under my eyes.

  Bryce grunts at them as if to say I am his kill and what do they think they’re doing scavenging his meat. They stop their attack but it’s not much relief. Bryce pushes his boot down harder on my head, squishing it sideways like the lid of a coffin coming down on me so all I can see is a fly in the dung. Unlike me, the fly is free, and mocks me by rubbing its legs together, the way Good Aunt rubs her hands together in glee before applying the fire-heated cups to my back to clear my lungs. God’s lungs! All I can hope is that a co
ughing fit doesn’t come on.

  The tightness in my chest begins, and I curse myself for having thought of wheezing because now I’ve brought it upon myself and it’s my own fault!

  Worse, Bryce thinks my cursing is meant for him.

  “Dare you call me addlepate? Is that what your puny brain thinks of me?”

  Actually, it’s exactly what I think of him, but never would I say it out loud.

  “You sniveling, red-eyed freak of nature!”

  I want to remind him that no one has claimed to see red in my eyes for at least a year. Except Good Aunt, and I think she’s lying.

  But Bryce only pushes his foot down harder. “What did you call me?”

  I answer only with a cough, a wheeze, and a pitiful sound I don’t mean to make but can’t keep from escaping.

  I feel his foot lift from my face and for a brief addlepated moment I think, God be blessed! He’s letting me — ow!

  By Satan’s arrow, he steps on my back, squeezing the last breath I have out of me and preventing me from taking another.

  I panic, my eyes watering, while images of my village spin in front of me. There’s a ringing in my ears and my whole world goes black. This is what it feels like to die.

  But, if this is death, it’s not nearly as painful as I imagined. In death, the foot of Bryce is mercifully lifted from my back. Maybe I’ve made it into heaven! Air fills my lungs. I hear an “Ow!” yet feel no pain. I think I’m going to like heaven.

  There’s a thud and a groan next to me. I open my eyes. St. Jerome’s bones! What is Bryce doing in heaven beside me? Who killed him so fast? And why is he up here in this lofty place?

  Suddenly, a terrible thought enters my mind. What if I’m in hell? I squeeze my eyes tight shut and pray for forgiveness for all the foul things I’ve said about Good Aunt, because surely that’s what’s landed me here with the likes of Bryce.

  I hear the crunching of twigs near my ear and open my eyes to see Bryce lifted into the air. I squint up into his shadow against the sun and, behind him, a Larger Being. For a fleeting moment I believe I’ve seen my Maker, who has realized His mistake and is preparing to fling Bryce to hell, where truly he belongs. But then I hear gasps and snickers and I know it’s not from angels. In fact, it’s from William and Warren. Their laughter grows louder when Bryce is dropped on the earth with a scream, a thud, and a moan. I stare at his grimacing face and look up to see Hugh Stout.