I had determined some years ago, reluctantly, that my SCA years were behind me. I even had an earnest little chat with my knight about if he ought to release me from fealty if I’m no longer fighting.
His response was quick. “I’m your knight, and you’re my squire, and what that means is between us and no one else.”
It honestly felt insurmountable to come back. My armor would have to be inspected and repaired, I’d have to re-pass the safety authorization. I didn’t have a padded arming coat to wear underneath anymore, having given mine away to a newbie in anticipation of making a new one which was still not done. (Note: padded arming coats are HARD to make!) Then there was my physical fitness. I’d spent 2015 in various hospitals and came out as shaky as a newborn chick, skeletal where the slurry of fat and vitamins pumped intravenously to keep me alive hadn’t made soft new flab. Add to this, the few times I tried to return to SCA activities as a non-combatant, I found myself ignored or even rebuffed (for not contributing enough.)
This might not have hurt so much if, years before, as I was cajoling my friend Matthew de Beaumont to be more active, he’d assured me, “Coming now and again is great! I disappear for months, and when I come back, everyone is happy to see me!”
The thing of that is, they were happy to see him in armor. A playmate. When I came back un-armored, I had no role, no purpose for the others around me. This isn’t a dig at the SCA, it’s true of any hobby – we wear blinders in a way, focused on our thing, whatever it is. Dancers don’t notice you if you aren’t dancing. Board game players don’t notice you if you aren’t playing. All my closest friends were on the fighting list, and fully occupied there.
So I felt, oh well, nothing to it, I’ll never be out there again, I’m too old, too weak, to gain back my previous prowess. And so I resolved to participate remotely, through painting award scrolls at home and dropping them off with friends to deliver.
Then, one day, sometime in early June I think, friends on Facebook were talking about Pennsic War 50, about it being a big deal, such an auspicious number! And it was a few months away, the sort of tight deadline I always like when I want to do something Quixotic. I looked at my schedule, and thought, “I could do this. I could get my armor good enough and re-auth by then. It’s just melee, I don’t have to be good.”
Let me repeat that: I don’t have to be good.
As soon as I thought it, I felt the release of an epiphany. A lot of what had been holding me back from a hobby I loved was plain old PRIDE. I didn’t want to suffer through being a newbie again. I didn’t want to slum around the bottom of the lists, losing every bout. I wanted to be Lyonnete, that chick who won the Pas d’Arms in Wales and took forever to kill in the shield wall.
I thought about all the fighters I knew and loved who were never that good at it. They just went out there, year after year, and had fun. No one begrudged them that. No one called them an embarrassment. They were, on the contrary, the beloved bedrock of our battle unit. Reliable. Helpful. Friendly.
I immediately messaged Madelaine, who had the pieces of my arming coat. I had commissioned my friend Pietro to make it, but he was too busy, so I had taken it back from him and given it to Madelaine, who was a professional seamstress, to finish… “Can I have it back? I’ll finish it myself.”
She hadn’t worked on it since the last time we’d spoken and was more than glad to let go of the project. It was pretty nearly done – it just needed to have the sleeves attached to the body and all the edges hemmed and finished. Oh, and lacing-holes. I ended up doing it all by hand, it was too fiddly for machine-sewing. I thought about how Madelaine had been worried I’d be too skinny for the coat when, after my illness, I’d met her to be re-fit for it. Now I was looking for ways to take it out because it was too tight.
I devoted every spare moment for two weeks to hand-sewing that beast. I brought it with me to science fiction conventions and sewed through panels. I brought an awl to Indianapolis and stabbed the lacing holes during a filk circle!
Then I had to actually find all my armor. I had squirreled it away in various closets and storage tubs in the basement… but most of it was in the coat closet, in my football equipment bag, where it had sat since my last attempt to get back in harness, at the January Event in 2019.
My shields were in the garage – smaller tournament heater and large “war board.” They are both aluminum sheets, very durable, but the leather and split hose edging was falling apart and full of spider eggs. Also the leather straps on the back were half torn off. I had my work cut out for me. You could see the evidence of past half-assery in flaking off duct-tape and frayed twine tying leather to metal.
The priority was the war board. I took it completely apart and cleaned it.
My buddy Steve had been nagging me to be active again, just like I once nagged deBeaumont. “What do you need done? What needs to be fixed?” I drove to his house on a Saturday morning and we had a confab in his driveway. He took my tournament shield to re-strap and inspected my helmet. The helmet would work, it just needed more padding. I said I’d do that and thanked him.
Seeing I had a Wednesday night free, I went to the local fight practice despite not having completed any of these armor fixing projects. I had a small metal buckler I could use in lieu of a full-sized shield, and I threw on a sweatshirt to take the place of an arming coat. I had another helmet I could use in place of the one that needed padding, though it was a sallet with a narrow eyeslit that had never been particularly comfortable to use.
At the meeting, I armed up and passed inspection. My sallet was terrible. I couldn’t turn my head and I could barely see. The bevoir hurt my neck and shoulders, sharp pains brought on by stretching my chin up and forcing my collarbone down. With nothing but a single layer of sweatshirt between me and the armor, metal dug and pinched my sides and waist. My arm harness flopped, not able to stay in place without an elbow pad or arming point. My knees screamed at the unaccustomed weight. And my tiny buckler was no defense against the slowest, carefullest swings from a friend.
After four or five slow, awkward sparring sessions, I felt like I’d been in a series of car crashes. And I was grinning so hard my face hurt.
When I was an active fighter, I wouldn’t have left the list field no matter how much I hurt until at least half the other fighters had armed down for the night. I was stubborn and prideful like that. Now I gave myself permission to arm down, having checked “pass an armor inspection” off my to-do list and I enjoyed the cool air on my sweat-soaked and bleeding body and wandered around, talking with old friends and new acquaintances, feeling like I’d won a tournament.
At home the next day, I re-assembled the war shield, and I tied on the edging with a knot every hole, instead of spiraling the lacing and knotting now and then, as I had before. I basked in the unique feeling of not half-assing something.
I asked my brother-in-law Mark if I could re-pad my helmet at his house, if he had any foam I could use. He did. I tried on my armor again and sparred with our mutual friend Cadfen in the driveway while Mark watched and offered advice. Cadfen and Mark had a lot to say about steps and a cautious path back to authorizing. I grinned and ignored them, I was steaming full ahead.
My arming coat was SO CLOSE, but not quite done for the next fight practice, so it was back in the sweatshirt, but this time my arm harness had all its straps and buckles and I had a big old war shield to carry – my goal wasn’t to do any tournament fighting, it was just to do the melee practice.
But when I got to the field, there was a surprise gift! Steve had fixed my tournament shield and given it to one of our friends to deliver to the practice.
My friend Sir Crispin approached with a helmet of his he said I could borrow. OH it was NICE. A little big on me, but dang did it not hurt! Though in my excitement, something was a bit off with my gorget. The gorget neck protector is smaller than the bevoir – it just covers the neck where the bevoir covers from the chin to the collarbones. I had trouble fastening the gorget and it was digging in oddly on one side, but I just chalked this up to being out of practice buckling it. Perhaps I’d twisted the strap?
Melee practice was announced. I felt much more comfortable and about fifty percent less weak than the previous practice, but as soon as the first drill started, that changed. I could NOT keep up with the others as we “advanced”. I apologized profusely, but our commander said, “NO. The unit goes at the speed of the slowest person, it’s not your fault. Everyone else, PAY ATTENTION.”
I still felt it was my fault. They weren’t used to carrying my weak ass.
I tripped and fell three times. When we stopped doing movement drills and ran some actual four-on-four combats, I died quickly, unable to keep my shield up because my arm was too weak to lift it.
I lay in the grass, my shield over me, watching a drone buzz over our practice, and wondered why I thought I could do this?
A break was called, and a friend who happened to be a marshal (safety officer) asked me, “So when were you thinking of re-authorizing?”
“Whenever,” I said.
“Wanna do it now?”
I could always try again if I failed, and it was just a SAFETY authorization. Not about skill but knowing the rules. “SURE!”
One of the fighters waiting through the break quickly volunteered to be my authorization partner and we moved to the far side of the field.
An authorization in the SCA consists of multiple parts. First, you spar, only calling out the blows – this is good, this is light, this is a leg… you can “die” eight or nine times without stopping. After several minutes of this, the marshal will call “hold” and confer with the authorization partner. Having been an authorization partner in past, I knew about what they were saying as I waited a polite distance away.
“So, what do you think? How’s her calibration?”
“Fine.”
“I thought that one leg was light.”
“Yeah, but I threw some purposely light ones after that and she called them light.”
“Cool. Okay, ready for the next round?”
“Sure.”
“Okay, go harder this time.”
And so we spar again, the authorization partner pressing harder this time, maybe 70% of their actual speed instead of the 50% in the first round. This slow gauging up is to see if the new fighter will react well to stress. If all goes well, after a few more passes of this, we do a “Crown Round.” The authorization partner fights all-out and all blows are acted out.
Of course he killed me quick. But I died defensively (turtling up under my shield as I laid down) and didn’t break any rules.
That was it! I was authorized! Since the PRINCE happened to be there, I even got my paperwork filed straight away via his cell phone.
As I armed down, I realized the source of my gorget discomfort — I had PUT IT ON BACKWARDS. LOL.
The next weekend, I was going to a book fair in Columbus. I brought my armor and my newly-completed arming coat and squeezed in a fight practice with the local group. The coat worked perfectly, protecting me and padding my elbows and shoulders comfortably, even if I didn’t fight awesome, I managed to hold out for a good hour of fighting and now I was FULLY ARMED with a shield that wasn’t too big nor too small… if I could only gain the arm strength to keep it in position.
But there’d be time for that? After all, I had a whole THREE WEEKS before Pennsic!
