The Knight Life

A knight of the Table Round should be invincible

Succeed where a less fantastic man would fail

Climb a wall no one else can climb

Cleave a dragon in record time

Swim a moat in a coat of heavy iron mail.

--”C’est Moi” from “Camelot”

*

It is a blazing 102 degrees outside. Still, layer by layer on it goes, about 100 pounds of armor and weaponry: shirts, leather vests, chain mail, metal greaves to protect legs, gauntlets over hands, steel helmets. After that, shields and 13-foot lances.

Black haired and black eyed, Sir Patrick Lambke exudes a cultivated smolder. He has donned light armor, also black. A crest of black hair rises from his helm and streams down his back. At the other end of the yard, big, baby-faced Sir Clifford Bassett pulls a helmet over long red locks. Both knights ride giant black steeds--Zeus and King. Shields up, lances down, the horses pound toward one another, hooves tossing clouds of dirt into the air. Through a veil of heat and dust, the knights collide.

Far from kings, queens, goblets overflowing with mead and tables laden with venison haunches, this particular joust is taking place in the realm of Tarzana. On any given Sunday afternoon, these knights can be found hard at work, training for battle in this 1-acre backyard on a quiet suburban street. They tilt at the quintain--a target with a shield on one side and metal weights on the other--jump onto horses and teach novice jousters and squires how to do their jobs.

Fantasy and reality have always been fluid in these parts. So it is only fitting that California is home to an entire community of suburban sword-wielding, neo-medieval athletes. Of the estimated 100 or so people jousting in regular shows and competitions around the world, a handful of locals is among the best. What they are trying to do is restore to glory a sport that peaked about 600 years ago.

This is not the theatrical jousting of choreographed Renaissance fairs, where the knights often pick winners ahead of time and carry lances of balsa--the wood used to make model airplanes--that obligingly explode on impact. This jousting is more like hockey.

“This is the original extreme sport, it was the first pro sport of the world, says Sir Talon McKenna of Calabasas. “And that’s what we want to see it become again.”

Riding hard between the rails as the knights clash again, Bassett rises up in his stirrups while aiming his lance at Lambke. Unfortunately, Bassett, who usually rides flat English saddles is riding Western today and forgets the saddle horn jutting beneath him. The impact with Lambke sends him crashing onto it. Instinctively, the men groan as he folds over the horse’s neck. “Oh, God,” Bassett moans, “now I know why I use the saddle I use.” Later, Lambke comforts him, noting that even eunuchs are welcome to joust.

Ordinarily, knights swear, the pain involved in jousting, is minimal. “I’ve broken my ankle twice, collar bone three times, nose, cheek, skull and had a sword through my thigh in and out the back--but that doesn’t count really because it was during a sword fight,” says Philip Humphries by phone from his home in Nottinghamshire, England.

Although it is true that a strong-willed horse recently pranced off with champion jouster Roy Cox, dragging his head along the ground as Cox dangled by one stirrup, the matter is hardly worth mentioning, he says. “Breaks, scrapes, scratches, contusions are just a part of it--but we don’t consider those injuries ,” says Cox, who lives in Westmoreland, Tenn. One of a small but growing number of full-time professional knights, Cox, 51, and his wife, Kate, run the Freelancers, a professional jousting troupe.

Cox, 6 feet 1 and a champion jouster, and his fellow Freelancers study videotapes of themselves after every show. And he’d better not see anything less than no-holds-barred contact. “I run my business like a military unit because we’re putting our lives on the line,” he says. In a good joust, both knights make themselves vulnerable, presenting themselves squarely as targets to the opponent. “Don’t tell me you’re a jouster and then get out there and play shield tag,” Cox growls. “I joust for one reason. I like to hit things.”

They come to the joust from different paths, but those who love it share some basic characteristics: a craving for adrenaline and combat, strong athleticism and a reverence for romance. In this sense, romance means valor and simplicity, not chocolate truffles (although they will resort to candy when wooing). The knights speak of honor and heart, of living by a few ideals, of eradicating prejudice.

“What happened is I saw ‘Braveheart’ too many times,” says Sir Steven Weems, stroking a horse during Sunday jousting practice. “I’m dead serious.”

Multiple viewings of Mel Gibson as the 13th century Scottish hero William Wallace battling tyrannical Edward I of England drove Weems, who had spent 10 years as a guitarist in the L.A. rock scene, to join a medieval reenactment group. Then came a chance meeting with the leader of a jousting group, the Master of the House of Hawk, Talon McKenna.

Soon Weems, now 36, was squiring for McKenna and learning how to ride and joust. “Me, being a skinny, longhaired rocker type, it was really difficult. I was not a natural at all.” Today he rides with the Knights of Avalon jousting troop, trains horses and owns most of the ones used at the Tarzana practices. Lean as a spear, McKenna sits in the living room of his Calabasas home and strips life down to a few bare truths.

“It’s important to be nice,” he says. “I try to be kind, try to be good.” Half Scottish and half Sioux--his Native American mother named him Talon--he favors symbols and signs of power, like the dragons tattooed on his front and back. By profession, he is an art director for TV and movies and ascribes to an aesthetic of simplicity. Jousting, he says, is the physical manifestation of living simply.

“I am a happy man, an average man. I’m happy with myself and with my life,” McKenna says. However, he would have loved living in medieval times. “Even with all the hardships, people knew who they were and weren’t so confused about life.”

These are self-anointed knights, ennobled by respect for valor in combat and trustworthiness when out of armor.

“Do I help little old ladies across the street? Yes, actually I do,” says champion jouster Shane Adams, a 31-year-old Canadian who is president and founder of the 85-member World Championship Jousting Assn. “I am courteous to everyone. But as my mom says, I’ve always been a knight--I just didn’t have the armor.”

At 6 feet 4, 255 pounds and a mane of reddish brown and silver hair, Adams is, by his admission, irresistible. “If I were to walk into your office right now wearing armor, you’d follow me out the door,” he swears. Then he laughs. “But it’s not me. Normally women don’t pay me any attention at all. It’s the armor.”

If the adrenaline rush of jousting were not enough to make guys love the sport, the perks would do it.

“Women love armor,” Talon nods.

“Women love armor,” Lambke swears.

“It’s the whole ‘save me’ type thing,” Weems says.

“Every woman I’ve dated since I started jousting professionally has been a woman I met through that suit of armor--it’s a fantasy magnet,” says Adams, who lives in Ontario.

It is, they agree, something primal. “That desire for a knight in shining armor is still very powerful,” McKenna says. The armor, however, also works a spell on those who wear it.

“Once you start strapping on that armor, you really become that knight. I see people differently. You feel very protective, especially of women.”

There are, however, some men who cannot resist a woman in armor.

Kate Cox is 5 feet 6 and maybe 125 pounds and wears chain mail she makes herself. She is the defending WCJA champion in the women’s light armor division but has been known to unhorse men in competition.

“You take a little bitty person like that--well, she’s been knocking guys off the back of a saddle for years,” says her proud husband, Roy. “It wasn’t until three years ago that I actually beat her in a round of competition.”

Yes, every now and then Mr. and Mrs. Cox strap on their armor, lower their lances and go full bore at one another. “Now, that’s a soul mate,” he says, lovingly. The two met 16 years ago at a Renaissance Faire when Cox chased off another suitor, yelling: “Avast you varlet!”

“I was her knight in shining armor,” he says. “Now she’s mine too.”

There never was a single code of chivalry for all knights. But as the constant pillaging, feuding and raiding of the early Middle Ages gave way to more organized battle, church officials attempted to impress a code of virtue upon soldiers who would vow to protect the weak--particularly women, orphans and clergy. The codes were often ignored.

Jousting was battle practice for the knight-soldiers. “But eventually this changed, as the joust in particular and tournament in general became an end in itself and not just training for war,” said UCLA English professor Eric Jager. “Skilled knights traveled around Europe, challenging and defeating other knights in jousts.”

Today, many of the pro knights credit Medieval Times, a nationwide chain of dinner theaters set in “castles,” with turning them into accomplished horsemen and showmen. At Medieval Times, diners are the “guests” of a fictional 11th century Spanish king and queen who are holding court at a tourney. The shows are set at a time when holy war gripped Europe and the Middle East. Knights, once considered brutal mercenaries, had gained a patina of religious honor among Christians because of the Crusades.

Lambke was a freelance photographer for the Chicago Tribune when he was assigned in 1988 to shoot the construction of a Medieval Times castle. He took pictures but also wound up working there.

“It was like going through boot camp, eight hours a day riding horses, sword fighting and then doing a show.” He jousted in Medieval Times castles, then began touring, jousting in fairs as far away as South America. He earns a living performing at fairs, and by acting and doing stuntwork.

Thanks to the popular theme restaurant and to the more than 100 Renaissance fairs that occur annually around the U.S., a sport has sprung back to life.

Almost 2,200 people a day visit the Medieval Times Castle in Buena Park, 365 days a year, and 25 million people have been to the chain’s seven castles, according to the company.

It is these people, along with the millions of passionate devotees of Renaissance fairs, that pro jousters see as the natural fan base for their sport.

There is some internal debate about how to present the jousters, centering for the most part on sartorial issues. Should armor come into the 21st century with new-age materials and technology? Or should jousting cling to its heavy metal roots?

McKenna, who is the president and founder of the International Jousting Assn., envisions an ultramodern, Star Wars-like plastic storm trooper gear, modern shields with electronic clocking devices and sleeker lances. He is organizing a tournament to be held in the Los Angeles area next spring, at which the new armor will be introduced.

Adams is for holding on to tradition. He has sponsored three successful tournaments in Ontario, and the next one will be in Dallas, at the Scarborough Fair in the spring. Knights from around the world--men and women, will be invited to compete for a purse of $15,000.

As much as it offers a fantasy escape from the hassles of modern times, the medieval period also serves as a mirror, reflecting familiar images and tensions that have endured through the ages. When jousting peaked between the 12th and 14th centuries, European societies had polarities that resonate today.

“You had religion versus a secular society, courtly love versus love in marriage, carnivals versus passion plays,” said Moshe Lazar, USC professor of comparative literature and drama.

The vast majority of people then were illiterate and superstitious. Terrified by the decimations of the plague, Lazar said, they were sure that Judgment Day would arrive in their lifetimes.

“When the church finally relented and agreed to allow plays for the masses, they were called the literature of the illiterate,” Lazar said. “That’s what television is today. And look at all the people who thought the world would end with Halley’s comet or the ones who are now reading the prophesies of Nostradamus. We’re still the same.”

With the push to professionalize jousting as a sport, an inevitable question arises: How to bring it to a wider audience?

At ESPN, there are no plans for regularly televised jousting, but the network is not dismissing the idea either.

“Jousting? Why not? Yeah, we’d take a look at the right proposal,” says ESPN spokesman Josh Krulewitz.

Recent years have taught programmers that the public appetite for fringe sports waxes and wanes. Some capture the world’s imagination in unforeseeable ways. When ESPN began the X-Games, bungee jumping was the rage. Now it’s out and motocross--freestyle motorcycle riding--is huge.

Sometimes, Krulewitz says, a sport surges up from a beach or backyard, a hilly street or dusty road and grips the world’s imagination. It taps into something larger than airborne bikes or slashing snowboards. It speaks to a set of beliefs and becomes part of a lifestyle. “Jousting?” he muses. “That must be something to see. Hey, you never know.”