The Dragon and the Fair M

by Gordon R. Dickson

  From the still-ajar door, politely and magickally waiting for Jim to enter the cottage, came Carolinus' voice, evidently raised in some sort of diatribe. Jim took a step toward and stuck his dragon head on its long dragon neck through the open doorway.

  "—and there's no excuse!" Carolinus was almost raving. "I'm gone for just a few days—"

  "Carolinus gone six weeks, Carolinus very sick"—sang the teakettle on Carolinus' hob, sending out a dutiful puff of steam, to show it was on the boil and ready to make a soothing cup of hot tea in a instant.

  "Weeks, days—what difference does that make?" cried Carolinus, waving his long, skinny, red-robed arms. "Everyone piling up to talk to me—no order to who came first—"

  He apparently ran out of breath. Taking advantage of the moment of silence, Jim spoke.

  "Oh, Carolinus," he said, speaking in as calm and reasonable a voice as he could manage, "something very serious has come up. We need you at Malencontri early tomorrow for a few days of visit—"

  "Impossible! Absolutely impossible! Dozens of beings ahead of you. No, no, it can't be done! You'll have to wait your turn like everyone else… as soon as I figure out whose turn is before whose!"

  Chapter Three

  No, no—" Carolinus was going on "—impossible! I'll see you later—"

  "Carolinus!" said Jim loudly. "Stop babbling and listen to me for a moment!"

  "Babbling?

  Carolinus, who had gone right on talking in no more than a bothered voice until that word, broke off suddenly. His voice rang through the cottage, which was abruptly vast and full of shadows. He had grown six inches, and his worn old robe was rich and more than hearts-blood new and brilliant. He was no longer old and stooped, but upright and looming above Jim in a room that was held in a new and utter silence. Even the kettle no longer made a sound.

  There was only the echo of that single word in Jim's ears—until other words came like the freezing wind off a mountain glacier.

  "YOU DO NOT SPEAK THAT WAY TO YOUR MASTER-IN-MAGICK!"

  In spite of some years of friendly interchange with Carolinus, for the first time Jim felt a chill. But in the same moment that feeling touched off his inborn stubbornness.

  "Forgive me," he said stiffly to the towering figure before him, "but I had to get your attention. The plague's reached London, and the Bishop of Bath and Wells is at Malencontri right now, come to talk to you there about it privately."

  "Already?"

  Carolinus was abruptly his normal self and size. He sat down heavily in a padded chair that scooted over just in time to catch him. The cottage was also back to being its usual self again.

  "It was in France but little more than three weeks gone," the Mage said emptily to Jim, the kettle and the cottage. "I'll come at once, of course."

  In the silence the voice of the teakettle steaming on its hob filled the cottage.

  "Tomorrow would possibly be better," said Jim. "The Bishop wanted it to seem as if you just happened to bump into each other by chance."

  "Of course," Carolinus said. He looked at Jim. "Forgive my abruptness when you found me here."

  "Granted, naturally," said Jim. "It was just that—"

  "But—" for a second, the Mage, the robe, the cottage seemed to threaten a return to what they had momentarily been "—I must warn you never again to say that sort of word you used to me, and above all never in public. In public I would have no choice in how I answered you. Such language to one's Master-in-Magick cannot be tolerated—"

  "Of course not. I understand!" said Jim, regretful now that he had a moment to cool down himself. "But I'd just met Ecce at your door, going out as I was coming in, and she was crying—"

  "Ecce? Crying?"

  Carolinus was suddenly on his feet, completely back to his normal self. He all but leaped toward the door.

  "Get that wagon-sized head of yours out of my way, can't you?" he snapped at Jim as he went by. "Ecce! Ecce!" he called to the gravel path, the pools and the flowers, "Where are you, dear? I didn't mean—whatever it was I said!"

  Nothing happened.

  "Oh, Jim!" he said, looking despairingly at him. "I don't know what's got into me lately! I'm become a cantankerous old man nowadays!"

  In spite of having completely forgiven Carolinus, Jim felt a strong urge to tell the older man that he had always been a cantankerous old man—at least as long as Jim had known him. But Jim held the words back.

  Then Ecce was suddenly there, in front of Carolinus, hovering in midair. She kissed Carolinus' dry lips as lightly and briefly as a blown flower-seed.

  "Oh, Ecce!" Carolinus said. "But how can you forgive me? What was it I said?"

  She shook her head and laid three of the tiny, green fingers of her left hand, like the tips of fern fronds, on his lips.

  "Very well, but I don't intend to lose my head like that again. Oh, Ecce, you know a matter occurs to me. The plague has come into England—no, you needn't worry for your friends, or the flowers, the trees or anything. Only humans can catch it—"

  She suddenly flung herself at him, her small arms stretched to their limit to embrace as much of his chest as she could reach, the left side of her face turned to press as hard as it could against the rough surface of his robe.

  "Now, now—nonsense—" he looked helplessly over her head and spoke to Jim "—I don't seem to be able to say anything right today. Ecce! You don't suppose for a moment something like that could bother me? I'm a Mage, a Magickian!"

  He winked at Jim. But as if Ecce had felt that tiny movement of his eyelid, she lifted her head to look hard at Jim.

  "No, no, you don't need to concern yourself about him, either," said Carolinus, "and in any case, very soon now—well, he and I are going to talk about that later. But Ecce, a thought just came to me. It seems I must leave here early tomorrow for several days, and there're all these beings who've been waiting to see me. But if you could help? We could sort out together the order that I'll be seeing them in. That should make them feel better about waiting. Now, I could make the decisions, and you could stop me if I forgot anyone…

  She flung herself up to his face and kissed him again.

  Soaring homeward under a half-full, lopsided, but rising moon, and with an increasing feeling that he was doing exactly the wrong thing by heading there right now, Jim tried to think of what he had overlooked.

  Then it came to him. Of course. The last thing in the world he needed or wanted among these guests of his were sparks flying between the Bishop and the Prince.

  The Bishop, he knew from experience, was nothing if not outspoken. Happily, he also was not given to sneaking small sneering comments into the conversation to kindle argument while still maintaining the forms of politeness at meals—his weapon was the mace rather than the dagger.

  But in that outspokeness, the Bishop would be feeling it his episcopal duty to be plain about the attitude of the Church toward the heir to the throne of England gadding about the countryside with the wife of another man. The wife of a Count, and no inconsiderable one, either.

  But the Prince, who, even in his teens, had showed no hesitation to clash head-on with people as tough as the Earl of Cumberland, would not be likely to back away from anyone who seemed to be casting a slur on either his companion or himself.

  At meals courtoise—the rule of manners among the ruling class—would keep an out-and-out explosion from the conversation. The tabletop language might be more than a little on the formal and frigid side, but that was a cheap price to pay for peace.

  But what was really needed was something that would keep both sides from bringing the subject up in a face-to-face moment away from the table. What was needed was some kind of permanent buffer between them. Perhaps yet another guest in the castle before whom the two potential combatants would not want to air their differences of opinion?

  —Of course! Brian would make the ideal buffer. Brian was part of the same Somerset neighborhood as Jim and Angie and, for all Prince and Bishop knew, equip
ped with eager ears to record every combative word said in the heat of their conflict for gossip in that neighborhood—from which it would soon spread all over England.

  They would have no way of knowing that Brian was the soul of reticence itself. Jim pumped his wings with sudden energy, searching upward for a higher air stream that would point him more surely in the direction of Brian's Castle Smythe. He found what he wanted and was on his way immediately under the cloudless but rapidly cooling night sky. Luckily, in his massive dragon body he found the chill more refreshing than otherwise.

  Castle Smythe was poorly lit when Jim finally reached it—it was always badly lit, after nightfall, even tallow candles had gone up in price recently—but the gloom hid much of the disreputableness of its decayed outworks, so that it did not look—at night—as vulnerable as it actually was. Brian was hoping to start strengthening it, once he and Geronde were actually married and he had a wife in residence. Bachelors could take their chances, but the wife of Sir Brian Neville Smythe was not going to, however fiery, pugnacious and experienced in defending her own castle of Malvern, little Geronde might be.

  But Jim knew the state of its decay well from previous visits, and made his landing, accordingly, at what had once been the wall that backed up part of the castle's warming room. There was a hole there big enough for even his dragon body, through which he could enter and reach the remains of the rather small Great Hall.

  To his surprise, he found Brian already there where the wall had been, digging in the darkness in the earth at his feet.

  "Oh, it's you, James," he said, familiar with Jim in his dragon body. He leaned on the tool he had been using and wiped his forehead. "I vow you gave me a start, though. Nothing but a dagger with me—and this spade. Not that a spade, of course, cannot be an effective weapon, properly used—but James, what brings you here in dragon form, just at the supper hour?"

  He checked abruptly, and Jim could almost feel the warmth of his embarrassment through the darkness.

  "—Not that you are not most heartily welcome to my table, now you have arrived. I have a guest at the moment. A gentleman you met at the Earl's last Christmas party—"

  "I'd be glad to meet him again," said Jim, "but I only flew up here to invite you to be my guest for a couple of days, since Geronde isn't with you at the moment—"

  "No, we were to meet the end of this week at Malencontri. But my guest—"

  "He must come with you, of course."

  Any other response was unthinkable. Jim's mind spun madly over the question of finding sufficient guest rooms. If Brian's guest was simply another simple knight like himself, he and Brian could be decently asked to share a room, of course. The guest would understand at once on seeing not only a Bishop, but the Crown Prince already there. Indeed, he would undoubtedly be overjoyed to rub shoulders (metaphorically speaking) with the great of the land. A feather in his cap.

  "Well, I've got to be getting back to Malencontri," Jim said hastily. "Tell you more about this when you get there. Why don't the two of you come tomorrow—come early, for breakfast if you like. Give you good night, Brian."

  "And God give you good rest also, James." Brian went back to his digging.

  Jim flew home to Malencontri.

  Unreasonably, almost unbelievably, once he had got there, and had changed back into his ordinary Jim-body after landing in the courtyard, he entered the Great Hall through its main door to find no guests impatiently awaiting him so that they could graduate from wine and tidbits to the meal proper. All he saw was Angie supervising the clearing of the High Table.

  Ready for nourishment himself, now, Jim almost ran down between the two long, lower tables, grabbed a cake from one of the few platters remaining, snarled at a servant who was carrying off the last pitcher of wine, and filled himself a mazer of the red liquid.

  "Oh, there you are," said Angie.

  "What happened? They ate without me?"

  "Of course not," said Angie. "—May Heather, go tell Mistress Plyseth supper for my lord and me is to be served up to the Solar." She turned back to Jim.

  "The Bishop sent down word religious duties would keep him from joining us, he would have a bite in his room. And the Prince came down but only to tell me he and the Countess were very tired after an unusually long day's ride, they'd eat in their room. But he also almost whispered in my ear he wanted to talk to you as soon you came in—whenever you did."

  "As soon as I came in?" echoed Jim, snatching despairingly at another of the small cakes.

  "Don't worry—you can get some supper into you in the Solar, before you go hunting him. He won't melt in the meantime. Remember, he said whenever."

  "That's right," said Jim, brightening but taking a third cake anyway.

  Nonetheless, he was feeling a great deal better forty minutes later, as he politely scratched on the door of the room that had been assigned to the Prince and the Fair Maid. Angie had assured him that, if necessary, separate rooms would eventually be available for everybody—only to meet protests that the two of them were perfectly happy where they were. But it had been necessary for her to mention it—for propriety's sake.

  In fact, the separate rooms would be needed, anyway, when Geronde, herself, showed up at the end of the week—and a double room could be provided now for Brian and his guest. There were, as well, storerooms in the tower that could be cleared, cleaned, and furnished. But right now the door Jim had scratched on was opening—though it only opened a crack and a slice of the Prince's face became visible.

  "Ah, there you are, James!" he said in a low voice. "A moment."

  The door shut again. After a moment it reopened enough to let the Prince slip out. He closed it softly behind him.

  "Dead asleep, the angel," he said. "Where can we go to talk privily? Your Solar?"

  "My wife is there, Your Grace," said Jim stiffly.

  "Ah, I see. I don't suppose she could be sent elsewhere for a time?

  "She could not."

  Chapter Four

  Of course," said the Prince immediately, but a trifle stiffly, himself. His position in life had accustomed him to giving orders in situations like this. Orders like, 'Tell her to go elsewhere until you send her word to return!' A flat denial to a request made as politely as he had made it—and from a mere baron at that—did not ring pleasantly in the ears of the heir to the English throne.

  But Jim was his host, and had not invited him here in the first place. "Ah. Then perhaps you have some other place where we could speak in perfect privacy?"

  "Certainly," said Jim. "It won't be as comfortable, of course—"

  "Hah! Am I not accustomed to campaigns where a tree to sit on, and a piece of tarred canvas to keep the rain off, were luxury?" It was no less than the literal truth, as Jim knew. "Still," he said, "I must apologize, Your Grace—"

  "Let us hear no more about it. Conduct me to this other place." The royal feelings were obviously reassured by the Prince's last two decisive statements. The sticky social spot was being glossed over. A further small touch of apology possibly could cover it completely.

  "It's kind of Your Grace," said Jim, "to accept such uncertain hospitality from us. I'll need to send servants ahead to make sure it's fit for use—Howard!"

  The man-at-arms posted at the door of the room occupied by the Prince and the Maid—a mere courtesy, but handy in moments like this—came running, when Jim had approached the door he and the servant stationed with him had discreetly retired down the hall.

  "Howard," Jim said now, "send the servant to get me Mistress Cinders—no, wait. Have her get me May Heather instead. She's faster. And the servant you send should go as fast as she can, too."

  "Yes, my lord," and Howard was running himself, back the way he had come.

  There followed a little period of waiting, which might have been awkward if the small, unspoken disagreement had not been settled. They filled time with polite conversation. Jim asked the Prince how the day's ride had gone. The Prince said he had enjoyed it
, but the Countess had found it tiring. This led to a short discussion of people who liked nothing better than to spend the whole day in the saddle, while others did so only when necessary—which was beginning to be interesting when it was interrupted by the appearance of May Heather, a little out of breath.

  "Mistress Cinders would need to have borrowed you and some of the other Serving Room servants to help her prepare the extra bedrooms," Jim said.

  May nodded, still breathless.

  "So," Jim went on, "take us to the biggest and freshest one—of those bedrooms—and bring an extra chair—" Jim fixed her with an warning eye to make sure the message was understood. The last thing he wanted was to escort the Prince to a clean, washed, but obviously empty, storeroom "—to the best bedroom! You can do that?"

  "Yes, my lord—my Grace Prince," answered May with hardly a gasp and a slightly less bobbing curtsy than she had been managing the last time Jim had seen her try it.

  "One title at a time is sufficient, lass," said the Prince, almost kindly. But as May turned to lead the way, he went on speaking to Jim, making no attempt to keep his voice down, as he customarily did not, acting as if servants did not exist or were deaf.

  "Young, isn't she?"

  "For some of her duties, perhaps," Jim answered, equally loudly. "But remarkably willing and learns quickly." He and the Prince went on in contented silence.

  As it turned out, Jim need not have worried. The room to which May took them was the furthest from the stairs on the second tower floor below the roof, and half again as large as the usual guest rooms. May had also been showing remarkable initiative, Jim saw with approval. Candles already lit, two pitchers—one of wine, the other of water—two mazers and a single platter of finger food sat on the small, square table. He had not needed to emphasize "bedroom."

  But how had she known a room like this was what he would be asking her for? Of course—the servant network. The man-at-arms would have overheard the Prince's request for privacy, passed it on to the servant who told May, and May—was it possible this youngster was already ordering around her fellow Serving Room servants?