I was eating my breakfast, my manager, Dave Cross, was due to come in ten minutes. Usually, he was late. He picked up the rest of the crew from North London in a big, white van. Breakfast was served up by my wife, Kaz, who used to be a model going under the pseudonym Sabrina Farfisa. It was Sunday and we were going up to a tourney in Nottingham. It was a couple of hours up the motorway from Abingdon, we should just make it if the traffic wasn't too heavy. We were both wearing tracksuits, mine was dark grey and Kaz's was pink, which contrasted with her auburn, crinkled, bum-length hair.
I was having a cup of tea when the door-bell rang. Kaz said, “That'll be Dave”.
“Bloody hell, he's on time, I've not finished my breakfast yet.”
I grabbed my sports holdall from by the front door, it wasn't heavy; all it contained was my sandwiches and a change of tracksuit. I made it up the front garden path, not trying to run, I didn't want to get indigestion just before a tourney or be seen hurrying.
Kaz blew me a kiss from the front door. I entered the van; all the crowd were there. There was Dave, Alison, my physio, Tosh, my “pusher”, Pinky, the armourer, Claire, the doctor, Percy, the bike mechanic, and Mo, Tosh's physio. In the back, in the luggage section was all the gear – the armour, the tandem and a spare. At least, I hoped there was. Dave, at a tourney at Carlisle, had forgotten to bring the bikes and Dave had had to scrounge round for replacements.
I'd been a “jouster” since I went to uni, in those days it was a purely amateur thing. We'd set a club up purely because it was a laugh; some of us used to be into Extreme Sports, I'd never done anything like that. It was just unis, we had a league purely for fun. It used be uni vs uni, until some kid got killed, got a lance right through the chest, he didn't stand a chance, he was dead before the ambulance came. In those days we used to wear thin steel armour over chain mail. The lance splintered and went into his chest. The tabloids went berserk on us, claiming it was some sort of weird cult, this got the attention of some minor satellite TV station, who started broadcasting our tourneys. Eventually, a major TV terrestrial network broadcast tourneys and this got the attention of the public and, more importantly, advertisers. Suddenly, it became prime time TV and the money flooded in. The amateurs formed a National League and a couple of top brass joined, including a prince and a cabinet minister. In brief course, a womens' league was formed, and an under-18's one also.
The driver was Harbinder, unflappable in all save the most dire emergencies. As a Sikh, he wore a turban. Sat next to him was Mark, the roadie, who supplied the muscle power necessary to load all the gear. I took my seat in the passenger section of the van, next to Alison.
The motorway was full of 'Sunday motorists', who were determined to go no faster than twenty. When Harbi could overtake, he did, the electric motor never betraying a whine. Dave Cross kept checking his watch, impatient as always. Everyone else just sat back and relaxed. We weren't the first on.
“Hey,”, I asked Dave, “who are we coming up against today?”
“Callum Randall, the Black Knight, you've fought him before”
I only remembered that I'd beaten him in the jousts three times, and once in the combat afterwards. He'd beaten me a couple of times. In tourney rules, you had three jousts to unmount your opinion. After three, there was single combat to force your opponent to yield, fought with a mace or a hand-axe, and sword.
Half-way there, we headed into the services, recharged the van, while we had coffees. Harbinder and Dave went off to smoke: all the rest of the crew didn't smoke and found it objectionable. Dave, his breath smelling of the sickly odour of tobacco, reappeared and checked his watch again.
“C'mon, we have to be off”
We all filed into the van, and Harbi sped.
I felt a little sick, I usually did before a tourney, it was the apprehension before the adrenaline kicked in. Dave wriggled into the back to check the gear. The rest of us had seat-belts on as required by the law, plus we didn't want to get thrown around should the van have an accident.
After a time, we got to Nottingham, Mark got out a map, trying to find the site.
“Don't bother, mate,”, said Harbi, “I've got the postcode so I'll just use sat-nav to find it.”
Twenty minutes and several wrong turns later, Harbi had to admit defeat. Mark was triumphant,
“First left and second right and then it's about a hundred yards down a farm lane.”
We stopped and we all got out. It was reassuring to feel the earth beneath my feet. Dave went to the administration tent. He returned,
“C'mon, we have to get to the changing tent, it's the one with the stripy flag on it.”
It turned out be a big marquee. We went in and found a free bench. I took off my trackies, and, in my t-shirt and shorts, sat down on a chair to wait for Alison to massage my calves. When Alison had finished, it was Pinky's turn to put my armour on. Nobody knew why he was called Pinky, I had a theory it was because he was a Marx Brothers fan. He collect my armour from a heap nearby – it was expensive and Mark guarded it diligently. It was a lightweight titanium alloy or something, carefully designed by Pinky so that every surface was on a slope and all edges were rounded; he'd learnt that from tank design. Incredibly tough, unlike the armour we used to wear as amateurs. He buckled up the breastplate, backplate, shoulder protection and the leggings. The boots were made of the same alloy and had reinforced toecaps so a kick would cause some damage. We had half an hour to wait before my event was called.
It was now the adrenaline kicked in. Toshihiro “Tosh” Ueda was my 'pusher', the one that sat on the back seat of the tandem and supplied additional power; he was a happy-go-lucky sort, Buddhist and always smiling. Nothing ever dented his cheerful disposition. He was slightly-built, slim and had strong legs – everything you'd want from a 'pusher'. Pinky had buckled him into his breastplate, shoulder protection and left arm armour. The 'pushers' always reminded me of crabs, with their one arm armoured and the other in t-shirt sleeve. Our armour was topped with a surcoat, only down to the waist, ours was in my colours, red and navy blue halves and my coat-of-arms, a dragon rampant (reflecting my Welsh ancestry) picked out in gold thread. My crest was on the left, on the right was the manufacturer's logo.
The tannoy boomed, “Mr. Sean Davis and Toshihiro Ueda to go to the umpire's station; Mr. Callum Randall and John Siddell also”. Tosh and I stood up and headed for the marquee's exit. Somewhere in the marquee a couple of characters stood up also.
The 'pretties' were still parading up and down, they wore skimpy, string bikinis, exaggerated high heels and too much makeup. I had met Kaz when she was working as a 'pretty'. Usually they retreated to a tent set up for that purpose, and were wrapped in furs and kicked off their heels, replacing them with trainers – unflattering but far more comfortable.
The umpire stood in the middle of the tilting yard. He tossed a coin, Randall guessed 'heads' and won the toss.
“I choose red”, he roared; the red end was thought to be lucky by all the crews.
“Ten minutes warning,”, said the umpire, “please shake hands”.
Both teams shook hands, Randall tried to crush my hand, which I thought was childish. Randall and Siddell wore black armour and black surcoats, with his coat-of-arms, a lion rampant, picked out in white.
We marched away and Dave Cross and Pinky met us, the others remained in the marquee. Percy brought the tandem up, and Pinky handed out helmets and gauntlets. We mounted the tandem and the Black Knight's team did likewise. I brought my faceplate down, the Black Knight's team wore 'bucket' helmets. The helmet was dark inside with a couple of rectangular eyeholes and myriad circular holes around my mouth.
A page brought a lance. The lance was long, wooden and had a steel tip. It was spiralled with blue and ivory stripes. The pages and the lances were supplied by the venue, to avoid being accused of bias. I rested the lance on the handlebars; there was no point in wasting energy on raising the lance until about ten feet from impact.
Tosh and I pedalled vigorously. We charged along the listing yard. I raised the lance at about ten feet from impact. I had been trained to carry on pedalling from the hit, it was natural to stop pedalling. My lance hit home at the Black Knight's chest. His lance bounced off my left shoulder. My lance shattered with a loud crack. We carried on cycling till the end of the tilting yard. There a page handed me a new lance; it was a little heavier and didn't balance as well as the first. I turned the bike round, it was a wide circle.
We accelerated into the second joust, this time both lances missed, bouncing off each others' shoulders. At the end of the second joust, Dave came up to me and said,
“The first hit must have caused him some grief, this time aim for his head”. Head-shots were riskier and often missed. We turned and accelerated again. This time my lance hit his head, while his shot bounced off my shoulder again. He slumped back in his seat and when he slowed down, a crowd gathered round him. We cycled back to the tent at the end of the tilting-yard, where we entered and threw our helmets down, tired. I took off my belt which held my mace and sword. I flopped down in a chair. Tosh did likewise.
A few minutes later, a female voice from out the entrance to the tent,
“Knock knock”
I replied, “Yes?”
The female voice asked, “Are you decent and available for interviews?”
I quipped, “Ready for interviews but couldn't say 'decent'”
Catherine Clark, the famous pundit, came in, and said, “Did you know the Black Knight's died?”
I replied, “What? How?”
She said, “His neck's broken. How does it feel they're calling you 'killer'?”
I said, “Who's calling me that?”
“Everyone”
“The Black Knight knew the risks and gladly bore them, we get a measure of wealth and fame in return for those risks”
I had put her in her place, and the death saddened me but I couldn't bring him back.
Dave Cross came in then. He said to Catherine Clark,
“Alright, love?”
“How does it feel to be manager of a killer?”
“We accept the risks every time we take part in a tourney.”
I couldn't wait to get home and knew Kaz would be more sympathetic.
Pinky came in and stripped the armour from me and Tosh. He put the parts in a big canvas holdall. The armour was valuable and there were apocryphal tales of robbery. Mark guarded it in the van, he was a big, physical presence but wouldn't argue with guns or knives – better to let the robbers take the armour and report it to the police.
After a long delay, I arrived home in my country cottage in Abingdon. As soon as I got home I took a long,hot bath to soak the bruises and aches out. That night Kaz and I watched some family-friendly TV, immediately I forgot what I had been watching. There was a mention of the tourney on the news. I hadn't mentioned to Kaz that my opponent was killed. She stroked my hair and murmured,
“You poor, poor baby”
That night in bed she climbed on top of me. I had been too tired and achey to make love to her.
The next day the news websites were full of the tourney's story. The Home Secretary declaimed there was need to legislate to stop further deaths occurring, no doubt to bolster his standing as he'd been accused of corruption – again.
I got a phone call off my publicity agent, whom I'd never met, excoriating me for the 'cynical' interview I'd given Clark. I said I was full of adrenaline and the news of the death had shocked me. She said she'd fix it. A few minutes later, I got a call of the sponsorship manager, saying a couple of sponsors were cancelling my contract as they were 'family-friendly' and didn't want to sponsor a 'killer'. However a cigarette company were offering to sponsor me, regarding the notoriety as a good thing. I didn't want to decline as I would be in desperate financial straits, however I didn't smoke being regarded as an athlete and didn't want kids to view the publicity, and she said I just had to pose for some publicity shots with a cigarette, they wouldn't appear in anything kids-oriented.
A couple of days later, the tourney made the news websites again, with Trixia, the Black Knight's trans goth girlfriend saying the insurance company were refusing the claim on the Black Knight for spurious reasons, including the fact that the Black Knight had been wearing a bucket helmet which was regarded as unsafe; it was what insurance companies do. She claimed the insurance refusal would impact her financially, and she may have to do porn.
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