Joust-Abouts : Good Knights in Stout Armor Hammer Away With Sword and Mace, Cheered on by Ladies Fair, in Pageants That Take Them Back Hundreds of Years to Their Chosen Time--the Middle Ages

It was like a staged train wreck at a county fair, or at least that is the way it sounded. There was more creaking and clanking and crashing and bashing and rending of metal than the Afrika Korps produced on its worst day.

It was Armageddon at the picnic grounds, with nearly 180 armored warriors crashing into each other, screaming like banshees, piling up in a deafening heap of flailing broadswords and pikes and axes and swirling dust. Five miles away in the Mexican border town of Tecate, they must have thought the conquistadores had returned.

And it all would have been pretty horrible, too, if it was not so . . . polite .

But that is the formula for a weekend with the folks from the Society for Creative Anachronism: When you are not being courtly, chivalrous, mannerly and scholarly, you are whaling the tar out of each other with big sticks. The idea of the society is for its members to periodically re-create, as accurately as possible, life in the Middle Ages. And, for a few hundred Southern Californians and others who gathered recently at Potrero Regional Park in San Diego County, that meant a little singing, a little dancing, a little revelry and a little war.

About two dozen of the nearly 100 Orange County residents who make up the Barony of Gyldenholt--the official name of the Orange County chapter of the society--showed up dressed to the nines, medieval style. They brought with them their own custom-made tents (they call them pavilions), their own authentically reconstructed armor and, as a reluctant concession to what they call the “mundane” world, Coleman stoves.

Members of the society refer to such a weekend as a war, but it is really a showcase for everything the society holds dear: a gathering of the court, displaying of homemade crafts and other wares, an opportunity to sing songs, tell tales, quaff a goblet, catch up with old friends, show off your newest lordly finery, and maybe storm a castle or two.

The Orange County chapter will be at it again Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Boysen Park in Anaheim, as part of its yearly anniversary tournament. Free to the public, the tournament will feature an opening and closing meeting of the court, medieval displays, costumes and demonstrations of single combat.

That sort of thing has been going on in Orange County’s Barony of Gyldenholt since the chapter was organized 10 years ago, starting as kind of an offshoot of a chapter begun in 1971 at San Diego State. The society itself came into being in 1965 at UC Berkeley, the creation of a group of students who were fascinated with medieval life, history and culture, and wanted to get together occasionally to dress and act the part and slip back into the time of the Crusades with all the trimmings.

Actually, members of the society have a fairly broad historical period with which to identify themselves, roughly from 1000 to 1650. While many of the members opt for identification with the time of Richard the Lionhearted, and fashion their costumes accordingly, others decide to portray late period Vikings or Elizabethan courtiers.

The organization of the society is based on the feudal hierarchy of the Middle Ages. A nonprofit, worldwide organization, it is divided into regional “kingdoms” in the United States (the kingdom of Caid includes Southern California), baronies such as Gyldenholt and occasionally smaller divisions called shires and families. Officers in the society carry medieval titles (king, queen, baron, duke or knight) and every man and woman bears the title of lord or lady.

Members also take for themselves medieval names and coats of arms, which must be approved by a council that rules on their authenticity. At society gatherings, they leave their real--or “mundane”--names at home. Some members say that occasionally they actually forget the true names of their associates.

Members are quick to point out that the society has no religious or cult affiliations. Rather, they say, it is a unique group of people with a common fascination for nearly anything to do with the Middle Ages, from weaving to cooking to music, literature and history, and to heavily researched battle skills.

“My wife and I got involved in this about two years ago,” said Ken Turlis, a maker of stained glass from Garden Grove. “And this is just our life now. There’s something going on every weekend in Orange County. My wife got involved in the lace-making guild, and I’m in the stained-glass guild. I love it, but I don’t get involved in the war. I’m not a fighter, I’m a wuss.”

Which means that Turlis doesn’t show up each Sunday at Mile Square Park in Fountain Valley for the weekly clinic in the fighting arts. It is there that the barony’s best fighters gather to work on their techniques with broadsword, battle ax, pike and mace.

Mark Sevigny is one who does show up. A 36-year-old deputy district attorney from Santa Ana, Sevigny has become so skilled at medieval fighting that he has twice won Gyldenholt’s periodic single combat tournament, entitling him to reign as king of the barony for six months. It was Sevigny--who is known in the society as Duke Armand de Sevigny--who led the Gyldenholt contingent into mock battle with other baronies at Potrero Regional Park.

“When you’re out there actually fighting,” he said, “you’re surrounded by dozens of people and you really get the feel of what it must have been like to confront a foe hand to hand, fighting two or three people at a time. The quote about ‘the fog of war’ becomes very real. It’s very difficult to communicate, and it becomes a swirling melee and you lose track of what’s happening around you. And it’s physically exhausting to go into battle like that.”

No one truly gets speared or hacked or bludgeoned or gored in one of the society’s wars. While the armor--metal, leather, chain mail or the like--is often made to precise specifications as dictated by thorough research in museums and libraries, the actual weapons are made of rubber-padded rattan. However, the weight, size and balance of each weapon is as close to the real thing as possible, Sevigny said.

“When you get hit with one of these swords,” he said, “it’s like a baseball bat striking one-handed. We hit hard. You have to hit hard to feel it through all the armor.”

Scoring is similar to fencing: an opponent who is struck a blow that would have killed him had the weapon been real simply acknowledges the kill and falls to the ground. There are, however, “resurrection” battles in which “dead” knights can return to the fray after a specified time.

Injuries occur, Sevigny said, “but no more than you’d see in a weekend game of touch football. You get a few bruises and maybe some welts from your armor. We call them armor bites.”

To the uninitiated, however, the battles appear ferocious almost to the point of hysteria. The first skirmish at Potrero, an “open field” battle, involved nothing fancier than dividing 180 warriors into two armies, positioning them on opposite sides of a large field and bidding them to rush at each other. The second battle was a fierce confrontation set on a mock bridge and the third obliged the armies to attempt to capture the others’ “castle”--a wooden mock-up.

Several ankles were twisted in gopher holes during the open field battle, but it wasn’t until midway through the bridge battle that a real injury occurred. Hal Brown, a knight from Phoenix whose society name is Sir Gilbert Bertram du Harfleur, was speared beneath his chest armor by a pike thrust and hit in the side by a helmet as he fell. Shaken and motionless, with the wind knocked out of him, he was carried from the field on his shield. He recovered after a rest.

Combat within the society is not limited to men. Walking off the field soaked in perspiration and grinning, Sally Farris, a professor of English at Miramar College in San Diego, said: “This is like your own personal sauna. Women go to resorts and pay a lot of money for the same result.”

Still, she added, “this is full speed and full contact and it’s deadly serious. I’ve broken most of my fingers doing this. A lot of people don’t understand why I do this, but it teaches you that you have an inner reserve that you couldn’t possibly have imagined. And I don’t consider myself a woman in armor. I’m a fighter, I really am. And where else can you go where you have a chance to die for your buddies and then drink with them that night and say, ‘You owe me’? “

It isn’t all desperate battles, though.

“I’d always been a medieval history buff, and I had a fascination with medieval literature and poetry,” said Todd French, a 25-year-old journalism student from Fountain Valley. “When I found out about (the society), I was really just amazed. It was like my dreams had come alive. It immediately drew me.”

French, who has been involved with the society for eight years, bears the title of knight, which he said means that “first and foremost, you’re a student (of the period). You’re someone who is the equal of your peers in chivalry and the fighting forms of the society. You’re an exemplary warrior who is accomplished in the gentle arts as well--all the things that would make a person worthy of a civilized court in the Middle Ages.”

George Rusznak, a 48-year-old computer operator from Santa Ana (Sir Bela Aba, Baron of Gyldenholt, to his society friends), said thorough scholarship “is one of the things that all of us generally get into. I’ve been amazed at the source material I’ve found. Quite often you run into people who all their lives--like I have--have read or studied literature of the period and didn’t know the society was around and they’ll just say, ‘Wow, where have you been all my life?’ ”

Sometimes, however, Sevigny said, “people ask us why we waste our time doing this. They’ll wonder why we’re not out on the golf course hitting a ball with a stick.”

Pam Thalman knows. A mortgage company employee from Westminster, Thalman said that “when you do this, you really forget. It’s a great mental vacation. I remember when I first saw people doing this during a demonstration at UCI. I looked up on the hill and saw all these wonderful, colorful pavilions, and it was like coming home for me. I grew up in a world of fairy tales, and I just ate it up.”

Still, Sevigny said, “we like the romance, but we understand the practical realities of living back then. Even with its problems, we wouldn’t trade the 20th Century for the 12th.”

It can be a curious but charming hybrid: Coleman stoves in pavilions, Budweiser in pewter goblets and, at Potrero, a unique argot combining the Middle Ages and modern America.

During a momentary lull in the attack on the bridge, a young woman, one of the volunteer “water bearers,” arrived at the edge of the melee and loudly announced, “Gatorade!”

A bearded, bedraggled knight, who would have looked perfectly in character at Agincourt, stepped out of the pile, pulled off his helmet, grinned and bowed, forever chivalrous.

“Thanks a lot, my lady,” he said.