Lords, ladies and swordplay > Medieval Europe lives on in Orono

The tip of a sword whips the air near Shamus’ black leather doublet, but misses its target. Lord Gregory Finch, who is attacking Shamus, quickly tries to retreat. It is too late. Shamus’ rapier slices the good lord’s leg for the second time.

Finch falls to the ground. From a sitting position, he bravely fights on. The silence is broken only by the thud of Shamus’ boots on the floor as he circles in for the kill. Then, in a blur and a clatter of blades, it is over. To his dying bellow, Finch is gallant:

“HA! Good SHOT!”

Death has exhilarated the good lord, who bounces to his feet, beaming a smile through his curly beard.

“At the end of a Rapier Combat practice I feel better than at the end of any of my old sport fencing practices,” says Finch, known without his doublet of golden velvet as Adam Williams of Orono. “This is the kind of fencing that we wanted to do originally, but it didn’t exist around here.”

In fact, Williams says, 90 percent of the people who begin sport fencing secretly harbor visions of Errol Flynn. What they get, however, is an antiseptic version of swordplay: confined to a narrow strip, limited to a specific target, garbed all in white and tethered to electronic sensors, sport fencers pursue points instead of glory.

Worlds and centuries away are people who take part in the Society for Creative Anachronism, an international organization devoted to re-enacting life in medieval Europe. For 25 years, the society has brought together people who like to dress, dance, brew, carve, rhyme and sing the way their ancestors did 500 to 1,000 years ago. The Society also includes people who don armor and battle with large rattans, wooden clubs used in place of two-handed broad swords.

Enter Rapier Combat, the bridge between medieval fantasy and the modern gymnasium.

Williams and up to 30 other enthusiasts — all members of the Society for Creative Anachronism, ages 20 to 60 — join together twice a week at a day-care center in Orono to practice swordplay. They dress, in differing degrees, like medieval and renaissance characters. They adopt new names, like Shamus and Lord Gregory Finch. They practice the qualities of chivalry.

But most of all, they fence, and fence well. Thrust and parry, riposte and retreat, rapier combatants use the same techniques as sport fencers when they compete. Many members of Rapier Combat are former sport fencers, and newcomers are taught by former sport fencers.

Rapier Combat, however, takes place in the round, as a real duel might. Scoring allows for a hit on any part of the body, and tries to simulate the physical damage that hit might cause. So, when a fencer is hit twice on a limb, he is no longer allowed to use it — hence Lord Finch fighting while sitting on the floor.

The greatest difference between Rapier Combat and sport fencing lies in the choice of weapons. Rapier combat is organized in five classes, the first of which is single rapier — a sport fencing foil, sometimes with embellished with a decorative bell and hilt.

In the next class of Rapier Combat, each fencer wields a rapier and a “rigid parry item” — the sword in one hand, and a short, solid object in the other hand to fend off attacks. The third class — perhaps the most showy — is rapier and “flexible parry item.”

“A cloak is the primary one used,” says Williams, “but people have also used hats, rubber chickens, whatever.”

Shamus (James Van Sandt of Orono) is now dueling Frasier McCloud (Steve Wright of Orono) with rapier and cloak. As the swordsmen circle in a horizontal plane, their heavy cloaks twirl in blue and brown vertical wheels. It is half fencing, half bullfighting.

With a noisy flap, Frasier snaps his cloak in front of him and thrusts his rapier underneath it. Shamus sweeps the attack away with his own cloak, feints to the outside and then presses inside, where his blade clashes with Frasier’s. The duelists pull back unhurt and the circular dance continues.

Van Sandt later reveals one trick he is waiting to try out — throwing his cloak directly over his head. “Their eyes will follow it up and by the time they look back down, I’ll be right on top of them,” he says, savoring the thought.

In a more advanced class of Rapier Combat, fencers use two rapiers apiece. The final, most difficult class is rapier and attack dagger. The attack dagger is usually a fencing foil cut in half and wrapped to give it a blunt end. Because the dagger is less flexible, it is more dangerous; only fencers certified to have reached a certain proficiency are allowed to use the attack dagger.

Over the four years since Williams and his wife established the Orono Rapier Combat group (like its members, it has an SCA name: Shire of Entwearde), Williams has reached the highest level of achievement, “don,” which allows him to wear a gold scarf or shoulder braid.

The shire as a whole has become one of New England’s strongest Rapier Combat groups, and has spawned another group next door at the University of Maine.

Williams still raises eyebrows when he walks across campus dressed in his white stockings, dark breeches and gold doublet. But he is used to the questions, and tries to sum up Rapier Combat in a quick image: “I will say that it’s a variety of sport that looks like The Three Musketeers.”

“The object is, well, to get some exercise, learn some history, learn a little bit about yourself in terms of courtesy and honor, and have some fun,” he says. Or, as Van Sandt puts it, “It’s something other than going out for beer and pizza.”