Balin and Columbine (A Children of the May Novella - Book 1.5b)

Chapter Twenty-Five: The Knight Invisible

Dawn was breaking over Castle Spar-Longius when Columbine finally managed to sneak past the guards into the open air. She hadn’t planned her route into the catacombs below the basilica, giving herself up instead to the thread that tied her to Balin, which had eventually led her to the side of her dying love. This disordered search, however, had made her journey back to the surface laborious, and full of many wrong turnings. At one point she had nearly been discovered on the basilica’s gallery, where the servants were preparing the thousands of torches and lamps that would light the underground tournament.

She had lurked near one of the ramps until the first spectators made their way down, to save for themselves the best seats available to poorer people. At that point she had shoved the Dolorous Stroke under her skirts, jamming the hilt and scabbard under her already too-tight bodice, and folded her arms over her chest so she could hide her bloodied hands in her armpits. Then she wandered up the ramp, telling the guards that she had forgotten something in her tent. Thankfully, the guard who had seen her before she clobbered him with the cobblestone hadn’t been there, or she would have had a fight sooner than she hoped.

Columbine knew what she had to do. Although thoughts of Balin kept bubbling into her mind, she pushed them down. There would be time to mourn him after their mission of revenge was complete.

On her way through the grand covered portico she encountered a few of the girls with whom she had gone in search of Sir Beaumains the night before. Prominent among them was a dreadful harpy named Dame Maledisant, and on her arm was Bellina Saunce Pité. The girls looked like they had been up for hours putting on their tournament clothes. Each of them wore dresses even more elaborate than the evening before, and, as the modern fashion dictated, extravagant headpieces. Bellina was the most radiant of them all, her dress a refreshing sky blue, her headpiece a complex weave of sliver threads that contrasted with her golden hair very pleasantly.

Dame Maledisant regarded the state of Columbine with a sneer. ‘Well look who it is,’ she said to the others.

Each of the girls regarded Columbine with their own version of Maledisant’s sneer. Although they said nothing Columbine could easily interpret the meaning of those looks: she was being judged for wearing the same dress as she had worn the night before. This had one of two possible interpretations in the minds of those girls: either she was too poor to afford more than one dress, or she was an immoral harlot.

Maledisant jerked Bellina’s arm to move her on, and the girls swept past Columbine without another word. She held their gazes as they went by; she not only had more important things on her mind than the inferences of judgemental girls, but she wouldn’t have had time for them in her normal life either.

She went up the stairs of the first side-tower, encountering only people coming down the stairs, none of whom paid her any attention.

Before she got to Sir Garlon’s chamber she unhitched the Dolorous Stroke from her bodice, and drew the blade from its scabbard. The Knight Invisible’s squire was guarding his master’s door. He turned when he saw her.

‘That’s a big sword for a little girl,’ he said, and then: ‘And very bloody hands.’

‘Open the door,’ said Columbine. ‘I’ve no quarrel with you.’

‘Not until you give me the blade.’

Columbine sighed as his hand went to the hilt of his own sword. With a flick of her wrist she cut through his blade. He waved the hilt and two inches of steel at her, before he realised that the sword was much lighter and shorter than he’s expected it to be.

‘If my sword can do that to your blade,’ she said, lifting the Dolorous Stroke until its point rested on his neck, ‘what could it do to this? Now open the door.’