A Joust With Time

‘Tis a wondrous sight to behold, to be sure. Cross a stream from where 20th-Century picnickers sit and suddenly you are in the midst of a Field of Revels and Tournament blazing with color in the late morning sunshine. Everyone is resplendent in chain mail, robes, swirling hats, iron helmets, red velvet shawls. There are knights and their ladies. It’s the Society for Creative Anachronism, traveling back to the Middle Ages, for . . . A Joust With Time

So you believe you’re living in San Diego, Southern California. Ha! That’s just the name to disguise the real world.

The truth is this is the Kingdom of Caid, and you are subject to the Awful Power of His Excellency the Baron Talanque, ruler of the most southwestern barony in the Known World, Calafia.

Yes, like it or not, you are living in what are known as the Current Middle Ages. Anybody who’s anybody knows we’re plumb in the middle of the Current Middle Ages. They have survived six centuries of so-called progress and their sinews flow like underground rivers through the entire land.

If you are in any doubt, come to a field of contest known in the Mundane World as Kit Carson Park in the Canton of Summergate, which you may recall as Escondido.

‘Tis a wondrous sight to behold, to be sure. Cross a stream from where 20th-Century picnickers sit, and suddenly you are in the midst of a Field of Revels and Tournament blazing with color in the late morning sunshine. Everyone is resplendent in chain mail, robes, swirling hats, iron helmets, red velvet shawls. There are knights, minstrels, fools, retainers, the beat of drums, the shouts of heralds calling for fighters. From somewhere among the striped pavilions there is the sound of lute music. Ladies in gold and knights in armor stroll on the luminous green grass among the trees.

Beneath streaming banners of scarlet and black, bearing the sign of the hammer, a group of armored medieval warriors don metal helmets.

“My Lord Kamal Mishwa Khan-A-Din! Make ready for the field of combat!”

A warrior steps forth, followed by his retainer. He points to his weapon. The young squire fetches the sword, hands it to him, then proceeds to fix the chain mail about his neck. Finally he hands his lord a broad shield, red leather on wood, with the sinister black hammer diagonally across it. “My Lords, are you ready?”

It is a black-robed woman bearing a long staff who calls out the question. They are in the middle of a grassy area surrounded by pavilions and roped off by red silken braids. The two helmeted fighters nod.

“You may salute the seat of His Excellency the Baron of Calafia and that of his Lady!”

The two bow to two empty seats in the baronial tent.

“You may salute the one whose favor you bear!”

Each turns and bows to a lady, each touching her token of favor at his belt.

“You may salute your worthy opponent!

Two gracious bows.

“My Lords! On your honor, you may lay on!”

Splat! With a rush they rain blows and bashes on each other. The sounds ricochet across the glade. A squirrel races up an oak tree. Lord Mishwa’s shield fails to ward off a stunning blow. He loses his right arm. Another blow slices into his thigh. He is on his knees, valiantly trying to ward off the blows. One fine swipe from his sword fells his opponent. Both are on their knees, their breathing coming out loud and heavy from behind their visors. Then one desperate swing of a sword clangs down on Lord Mishwa’s helmet. There is a gasp. He falls over, unable to bear the weight of his helmet. He collapses in a twitching pile on the ground.

With a loud groan he dies . . . .

. . . Then gets up, helped by his opponent and three female marshals.

“Good shot, my Lord,” he puffs, picking up his sword.

“Victory to Lord Guillaume de la Belgique!” calls the herald.

A polite clapping breaks out from the ladies. Lord Mishwa limps from the blow to his thigh. He hands his rattan sword back to his retainer, Talorc the Pict. The musicians strike up with a bawdy song from the 13th Century, and the smells of Arabic cooking, brought back by the Crusaders, waft out from the cooking pavilion.

An Age of Chivalry

The Society for Creative Anachronism is in full flower. The 20th Century has been sent to flight. That willing suspension of disbelief has been achieved. For a few short hours, at least, the best of the age of chivalry comes back to life. Women are ladies, men are lords. Life is lived as it would have been in the Middle Ages--if you somehow managed to eliminate the suffering of the serfs and the squalor of the towns, the odd plague of the Black Death, the religious persecution, the burnings of witches at the stake.

This is upper-middle-class medieval society, with a scholarly bent, an outlet for a fascination with another way of life where scale was small, gallantry large, heroes not media Frankensteins but part of the everyday fabric of society. Capturing the face of this age is to capture a compelling romance, a challenge that seems to attract many from the universities, the military, the professional world. Especially computer freaks suffering from, uh, “human interface deprivation.”

Today the tents and pennants of two houses dominate the field. The Cantons of Summergate (Escondido) and Sonnental (El Centro--yes, they are determined time-travelers there, too) have come together to celebrate their 10th anniversary. They come from two outlying areas of the Barony of Calafia, which is part of the Kingdom of Caid (Arabic for fortress). Caid itself is one of 11 kingdoms spread across the United States and Canada, with branches now even in Europe.

More than 5,000 paid members and their many hangers-on attend tournaments regularly. They range from serious scholars to those who go to local events just for the pleasure of dressing up and being called “My Lord” and “My Lady” for the day.

The whole idea mushroomed out of a costume party back in 1965 held by a group of history majors at UC Berkeley. The theme was the Middle Ages, and everyone addressed one another with great courtesy and exchanged titles. What’s more, the men took broomstick swords and baseball pads to do battle for their ladies’ honor.

That night they learned a lot more than they expected, and they enjoyed themselves so much they decided to do it again . . . and again. The Age of Chivalry was, in a small anachronistic way, reborn. And an anachronism being something misplaced in time, they decided to call themselves the Society for Creative Anachronism.

Documented Creations

But it’s not just silk stockings and hats and embarrassed giggles of the dress-up party. This is for real. These guys are serious. Each member knows he must become someone else. Members spend days, weeks in libraries, looking up the age and area they have chosen to re-enter. They are inventing a time, a life, they’re giving birth to some other person from within whom this age has perhaps kept trapped inside too long. The frustrated artist, the unrecognized hero. It is a marvelous second chance in life. Except in this one, you’ll know about the beginning, middle, and maybe even end before you begin.

The society doesn’t encourage members taking over real historic characters such as King Arthur or Queen Guinevere. To keep the anachronism creative you must create your own individual. Just be true to his or her age. Know his circumstances, his family history. Some members have whole family trees worked out. Lady Elspeth Ni Conchobar of Kerry is a young lady from 10th-Century Ireland who traveled across the water to become a novice in a Transylvanian household. Yneser Ongge Xong Xeri-Ye, the woman warrior from Mongolia, spent two weeks going through books on her favorite subject, Kubla Khan’s China, before coming up with herself. Some, especially fighting groups, coordinate their era, their geographical circumstances.

Rick Hardin steps out of his car. The moment he crosses the stream, he ceases to be that manager of Crown Books on Broadway downtown. He zips back six centuries to become the redoubtable Thorvald Olafson, born in the year AD 982, a member of a quasi-religious Byzantine fighting order known simply as The Abbey. It is The Abbey whose insignia is the hammer, a sign that sends genuine ripples of apprehension down the backs of opponents in the field. In wars, melees and individual fights--the staple functions of the order--The Abbey has become the jewel in the crown of the Baronetcy of Calafia.

Its members are serious about fitness and about gaining mastery over the strategies of group fighting. Lord Thorvald and his brothers practice their art at least once a week. He’s big. In his leathers and padding, his chain mail made from door springs, his metal helmet, he is positively frightening. Underneath all that, in the heat of this Calafian winter’s day, he must be sweatingly hot. But no one doubts his prowess with the sword, broadsword, ax and mace. There are a lot of kudos in being a good fighter. The ladies love to swoon over you--even though one or two ladies are now turning to padding up and are coming out fighting themselves.

But it’s not the only profession. Here today are brewers of ancient beers and mead, musicians, robe-makers, heraldry specialists, cooks of medieval food, armorers, medieval games fanatics, even some who volunteer to become retainers--you are never forced into this--attaching themselves to a Lord to learn from him, and to fetch and carry for him.

The Honey that Draws

Still, here under the oak tree with The Abbey’s insignia, fighting is the honey that draws. Lord Mishwa is not The Abbey’s best fighter, but he leads the house in war. He is the tactician. He is very successful. Even though none of them are knights yet, inside and outside the Kingdom of Caid, the name “The Abbey” is respected by knight and warrior alike.

“The fighting is with wooden swords, and we work on the honor system,” says Lord Mishwa, David Guinasso, who is 29 and has been in the society for 11 years. “A head blow means death. Blows to the limbs--we presume them to be cut off, or useless at least. The funny thing is, you don’t need the blood and gore of the real thing to get the feel of their way of fighting, to actually learn the courage and the tactics necessary to win. And when there’s a good melee on, or a full-scale war, which we organize every now and then with neighboring kingdoms, your blood gets up, I can tell you. It’s a high!”

What’s the hardest thing for a beginner? Not flinching, he says, that and taking the inevitable bruises. Someone next to him is practicing with a novice, lifting his sword and bringing it down with a “bonk” onto the poor guy’s helmet.

“If you flinch, you’ll pull back your head and get hit on the side, and that can hurt twice as much,” says the instructor.

So they are serious about this fighting, as a sport?

“Hell, they have fencing here today. That’s a survivor from the same general times, why not sword and broadsword fighting too?”

The incredible complexity of this world within a world, and the seriousness with which it is taken, becomes apparent with every person you speak to.

A sinewy young man in Irish medieval garb comes up to watch some of the fighting. “I used to do that,” he says. “It was the thrill of my life when I first started 10 years ago. Then I suddenly got interested in music, playing the tabor, the medieval Irish drum. Then I started making armor. Now I make shoes.” He shows his own soft leather wrap-around shoes with lacing up his calves. “It’s quite a little business now. Look around. See how many are wearing them.” He turns to watch the hammer-throwing on a nearby grassy knoll. “But you know what I enjoy doing most now?” he asks. “Storytelling. I’m really into the stories of that time. Like the Battle of Brunanburgh. It’s part of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, from 937 AD. You want to hear it? It starts off ‘Athestan, king, lord among earls, bracelet bestower, baron of barons. . . .’ ”

He throws himself into a long, high-drama narrative of blood and treachery and weeping women and fatherless children and war-butchered horses.

Nearby, the musicians are starting to tune up beside their blue-and-white pavilion. Leopold Lothringin, a modest noble from 16th-Century Swabia (Switzerland today), picks up an ancestor to a violin, the viola da braccio. His lady, Irene Elise, puffs at a great curved horn, the loudest in the ancient world, they say, called a krummhorn. A third blares out with a shawm, which looks and sounds like a snake charmer’s horn and developed into what became known in England as the hotboy and in France as the oboe. Someone next door is tuning up on the palmar, which used to be played to herald the arrival of caliphs and to ward off evil spirits.

The drum starts up its rhythm. The pipes and the viol pick the tune. The dancers set off in a rainbow-colored circle. The men are being genuinely gallant to the ladies. There is no hint of self-consciousness. The men scrape, bow, proffer hands; the ladies accept them with obvious pleasure. Lord Vladimir Iz Livoni, a 10th-Century trader from the Hanseatic League, steps back with a sweeping bow. Next to him, a wool merchant from Champagne, Avenal Kellough, spins his lady. But everyone knows that his real lady lives in the Barony of Caerthe--Denver--and in July, fantasy and reality will merge when the two marry within the society, in costume, in great medieval revelry worthy of the occasion.

The storyteller, otherwise known as Caoimhghin O’Dalaigh, or Kevin Daily, is finishing.

”. . . Death! . . . when earls that were lured by the hunger of glory, got hold of the land.”

He learned all that--for fun?

“Sure,” says the ex-Coast Guard sonar technician. “It’s easy when you love it. That’s what’s great about the whole society. It’s so creative. And it has made me so much more creative than I would have been, just living in the mundane world.”

The sun is sinking. A call goes out through the rustling trees. The herald is calling the lords and ladies to the Closing Court. The Baron Talanque, the longest-reigning baron in the whole society, having established the baronetcy in 1969, isn’t here today.

Dean Hallford, now an administrator at San Diego State University, is not like kings who gain the right to their crown for six months by battle in the field. He started Calafia, so he’s in charge for life.

The senior peer, Dona Eva Marguerita Palme de Yuste, sits in his place. Speeches sum up the day, and the climax comes with the presentation to the Champion of the Lists. It is not, as some thought, Raphael the Rogue, nor is it Thorvald Olafson.

Today, Njal Grimmsson, a fighter from Drafn in medieval Russia, is brought forward to kneel before his betters with his lady. They are presented with silver platters and silver goblets for mead, and lift their heads to hear the roar of three cheers from the whole Baronetcy of Calafia.

“I’ve loved this since I first saw some knights fighting on Ocean Beach where I was jogging one day,” says Dave Nelson, Grimmsson’s alter ego.

“If you don’t mind the bruises, this is safer than tennis, and there’s so much more to it. Oh sure, I got killed once this afternoon, but I won seven other times. It’s fantasy and reality. That’s what it’s all about.”