Tourney, Joust, Mêlée - A Guest Blog by Jeri Westerson

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: If you've been following along at home for any amount of time, you know I love, love, love historical mysteries. And you also know I'm frequently amazed at the amount of research that goes into them; pouring over old photos and court records, reading up on clothing and food. My friend Jeri Westerson, however, doesn't stop there. She rubs medieval memorial plaques. She tracks down medieval relics. She takes pictures of medieval underwear (I promise, she's not a perv.) Honestly? I suspect she started writing her "medieval noir" mysteries so she could feed her habit. She says it's to reproduce the 14th century world of Crispin Guest, disgraced knight-turned-detective, but I think it's an excuse for her to put on her armor and hit the lists.

Two knights sit on horses and aim for each other with lances, trying to knock the other guy off the horse. This is what most people think a joust is. 

 

Not so fast.

There was far more to it than that, and more than Sir Walter Scott even knew in his Victorian potboiler, Ivanhoe.

Why does a mystery author give a joust the time of day? Because I write medieval mysteries, the Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series, to be exact, with my disgraced knight turned detective on the mean streets of fourteenth century London. 

 

But I digress. We were talking about tournaments. A tournament is not necessarily a joust, though a joust can happen at a tournament. Because a tournament is a competition of battling techniques, though it is likely it always involved some sort of horsemanship. The word tornoi from which we derive “tourney” and “tournament” alludes to a mounted charge with lances couched under the arm. It was a dangerous sport, but in the beginning even more so, if you can believe it. In the 12^th and 13^th centuries it was all about the mêlée or all out battle and these earlier games were going for the real thing with a field so wide it was set between the boundaries of two towns. If your village was unlucky enough to be in the way, well…let’s just say you got a front row seat. The lists were originally not the field set aside for jousting, but actually the place marked off to get out of the way of the battle. No one is sure where the word comes from. It might come from the lil, the designated spot in the French martial court where such games of skill were played, or from licium (band of material) or palicium (paling) the stuff surrounding the lists.

At any rate, William Marshall, the knight of knights from the 13^th century, wrote down many of the rules for being a knight and for the proper comportment at a tournament. He even explained how a young knight could make a lot of scratch from ransoms and prizes by “doing the circuit” of the tournaments.

Of course, it’s all fun and games until someone puts out an eye. Or loses a limb. Or gets killed. There were detractors. The Church wasn’t happy with this careless use of manpower. Sixty men alone met their end in a tournament near Cologne in 1240, not from battle, but suffocating from the heat and dust. In 1193, Pope Celestine III declared an edict against tournaments but, maneuvering around it, Richard the Lionheart granted licenses for tournaments anyway. The Church went further to discourage it by declaring a ban on sacramental burial for those who died during a tournament, but the clever knights got around that, too, by slipping a monk’s habit on the dying knight and proclaiming him a cleric. 

 

As armor got better, that is, moved into the era of plate armor rather than simply mail, it became possible to support tournaments with fewer casualties. But it was the joust that made tournaments more acceptable because this was a bout between only two combatants at a time. The word “joust” likely derives from the Latin juxtare—to come together. And indeed, they do.

Two men, mounted on chargers—big warhorses—run at each other between a barrier at full gallop, lowering lances aimed at the other. What could be better than that?

There were three points on the body the knight aimed for: the four nails on the shield, the helm, or the throat armor. Usually, it was a test of three broken lances. If you could withstand the hits without being unhorsed, you could call a draw, keep going, or continue on foot.

With time, more regulations were added and more order took over the rather rough and tumble that the tournaments used to be, making tournaments truly the sport of kings. By the fourteenth century when my books are set, a joust could be held for all occasions; royal weddings, coronations, and even for deciding judicial matters. In my upcoming book BLOOD LANCE, one of the threads of the story involves a dishonored knight accused of desertion. Meanwhile, Crispin witnesses a body hurtling from London Bridge into the Thames. Whispers claim it’s suicide but Crispin insists otherwise. Now he’s caught between rebellious actions in King Richard’s court, an old friend’s honor, and the true ownership of the legendary Spear of Longinus, culminating in a deadly joust on London Bridge.

  

Because such feats of arms always seem integral to my stories, I find myself doing a bit of hands on research. Yes, you can find me in armor now and again, doing my best to capture the feel of what my characters are going through, whipping a sword around, and harassing the populace. 

 

I was most definitely born in the wrong century.

(And yes, those pictures are of me, doing my best research for Crispin). 

 

BLOODLANCE will be released October 16, 2012 in hardcover, ebook, and audiobook. Find out more on Jeri’s website, including a book trailer and a video on Jeri’s swordcraft. You can read her not-to-be-missed blog, Getting Medieval, and follow her on Twitter as @jeriwesterson. She's not on Facebook, but Crispin Guest is! (His interests include solving crimes, hunting, and hawking.)

Jeri is offering a copy of BLOOD LANCE to one lucky commentor! So hop onto the back-blog and tell us what you'd have been doing back in the Middle Ages!

Author Jeri Westerson Gets Medieval…For Real

HALLIE EPHRON: I once interviewed an author who had her husband lock her in the trunk of a car and drive around so she'd know what it felt like to be her character. Jeri Westerson goes to extremes like that for her art, too. Her latest, TROUBLED BONES, is just released from St. Martin’s Press. Welcome to Jungle Red, Jeri!

JERI WESTERSON: I spend a lot of time thinking about being a medieval knight. Which is, perhaps, an odd thing for a middle-aged, overweight, Jewish mother in southern California.

I have a good excuse, though. I write about a medieval knight—an ex-knight, actually—Crispin Guest, who solves crimes on the mean streets of fourteenth century London in my Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series. He gets into all kinds of scrapes and has to take up arms at one time or another.

Because of my immersion into the Middle Ages, one of my hobbies is collecting medieval weaponry and learning how to use them. After all, I can’t write about them with any sort of accuracy if I don’t know how to handle them. I like to do a lot of hands-on research for my novels, as a matter of fact. I sewed and have worn the right garments for the time period. I’ve made the food and even brewed the beer.

But this city girl didn’t know squat about horses. What’s a girl to do?
Why, find some knights, of course.

I met Thomas Montgomery at a local joust (yes, there are, occasionally, local jousts). I now feature him and one of his knights, Sir Anthony Parvino, every year at my book launches where they duel to the death with swords and otherwise offer verisimilitude to what might otherwise be a typical book signing.

Montgomery, 40, has owned and operated the Imperial Knights for fifteen years, entertaining at corporate events, Renaissance Fairs, and local schools. He got his start at Medieval Times Dinner Theatre and Tournament in Buena Park, California, learning the routines and much of his horsemanship there. He moved on to the Excalibur Hotel show in Las Vegas and even furthered his training to ride Lipizzan stallions.

I’m not afraid of horses. Far from it. But I certainly wasn’t raised around them in downtown Los Angeles. My experience with horses consisted of the occasional pack train variety when I was a kid. And I usually got stuck behind the horse with excessive gas. Ah, those were the days.

It was hot and dusty that June day when I went out to Montgomery’s ranch. He led me around to the back into the stables of his six horses. That’s where I met Thor, all two thousand pounds of black Percheron. Originally bred as warhorses, Percherons are used as draft horses these days.

And he was a big fella, about sixteen hands tall. All Montgomery’s horses are gelded so, as he put it, they “wouldn’t get their own ideas.” Medieval warhorses were not. The knights believed it gave them the strength and courage needed to face an oncoming assault. And, of course, how manly would that be riding a gelding?

Thor, a “big coach potato of a horse,” as Montgomery called him, would be my mount. That’s what I’m talkin’ about! But first, I needed to be armed.

Around the Norman Conquest, knights wore mail shirts called hauberks that reached to their thighs, but for the era I write about, the fourteenth century, lots of plate armor was introduced. A knight in full harness could weigh anywhere from eighty to one hundred twenty pounds. One of the myths about armor was that it was too heavy to move in. A knight needed to be able to mount and dismount his horse, move easily, fight, even do cartwheels. About the only thing not recommended to do in one’s armor was swim in it!

But I am not a trained knight. Far from it. A coach potato of an author myself, I was fully prepared to have a hard time of it. I was strapped pretty tightly into the mail. With the shoulder plates buckled on around my upper arms I felt sufficiently restricted in my arm movement. It would take a lot of training (and me many pounds lighter, I admit) to be able to fight let alone do cartwheels.

Next my arms were secured with heavy leather vambraces—leather covers from forearm to wrist—and then I slipped on the surcote, sporting the knight’s colors.

I moved stiffly through the barn to where Thor was fitted out and ready for me. But already I felt different. As an actor, a costume helps you get into character. Strapped into armor with wide metal shoulders, I started to get into the proper mindset to get medieval on someone.

Thor stood ridiculously tall with his saddle and stirrups. He’d look more at home in front of a wagon loaded with beer barrels. But all I could think of in that moment was, “Thank goodness for the mounting stool!” I’m a bit on the short side, certainly shorter than even your average medieval man, and the prospect of mounting this draft horse was daunting enough. Up I went and, amazingly, I made it. I may be plump but I’m agile.

After the stirrups were adjusted for my height, I got the feel of him. You are truly high up there and no doubt intimidating with some two thousand pounds of horse and battle gear bearing down on some hapless footsoldiers. They’d get out of your way, for sure.

I wasn’t going to be doing any of that on Thor today, however. Just a little sauntering, but one can still get the idea being up so high and on so powerful a muscled beast as he was. After all, writing is not just about imagination, but absorbing experiences, whether emotional ones or ones with muscle and sensory memory.

I put on the helm. Truly, it’s hard to see a bloody thing. Eye slits running across the front allow the wearer to see ahead of them, but not below. I was handed a lance. Ah, more like it. I have studied the jousting lore from William Marshal, the knight of knights from the twelfth century, to modern scholars of chivalry, and knew how to couch a lance under my arm and lower it toward my target. Of course, I’m just sitting there, not riding full tilt at another jouster. But let me tell you, the idea of being struck with an opposing lance and getting knocked off your horse…

That’s a long way down.

I was happy to have had at least a little hands-on experience on a warhorse and with a lance and armor. It brings my character Crispin Guest that much more alive.

When I asked Montgomery’s advice about being a knight, I thought his words were something that even Crispin could take to heart: “Don’t blink.”

HALLIE: Yikes! You are a far hardier soul than I. Thanks, Jeri! This was so much fun!

Jeri Westerson's latest Crispin Guest novel, TROUBLED BONES, is just released from St. Martin’s Press. Visit Jeri’s website to read excerpts at www.JeriWesterson.com. Learn more about the Imperial Knights at www.ImperialKnightsLive.com.

Would someone please ask her about her collection of medieval weapons?