The Dragon Waiting

by John M. Ford

  Hywel said "There are messages, Stefan?"

  "One from Cherbourg. Your ship has arrived, and will depart for England in twelve days. Another from Angers: le Chaudronnier must see you. It is most urgent."

  "No other details?"

  "Hywel. Do I forget?"

  "No, Stefan. You do not forget." Then Hywel spoke in the language Juliette had used, and Stefan answered; they both laughed.

  "Dinner," said Juliette from the doorway.

  Dinner was lentil soup, followed by hot pork in aspic, with a potent red wine. Despite what the hostess had said, there was no blood sausage on the table.

  Late in the meat course, Juliette came out of the kitchen with two shallow, covered mazers. One she set before Gregory, the other at Stefan's left hand. Then, without a pause, she took a decanter and a tray of crystal glasses from the sideboard and poured a dark liquid for all the others, then herself.

  Hywel lifted his glass. "To life," he said, "and every joy in it." Stefan thumbed open the hinged lid of his cup and held it toward the center of the table. Gregory uncovered his mazer, his hand not quite steady. The others raised their glasses. There was the sweet, strong aroma of plum brandy.

  All drank. Gregory took a small sip, then a larger one; he closed his eyes and lowered his cup, licking his lips absolutely clean. Cynthia looked at him, then at Hywel, who nodded slightly, then at Juliette Ionescu, who smiled back warmly. She went to stand behind her husband, put her long-fingered hand on the hollow below his collarbone.

  Dimitrios lifted his brandy glass, said "To the horsemen of Wal- lachia, who have fought the good fight for many generations... and won."

  Stefan laughed aloud, banged his fist on the table, and they toasted again. Gregory's eyes were still tightly shut. Stefan said "Any more salutes?"

  Cynthia began to speak, and all except Stefan turned to her, but she shook her head instead.

  "We must be going, alas," Hywel said.

  Juliette shook her head. "Oh, no. There are beds enough."

  Stefan said gently, "And they have business in Angers, and a ship waiting beyond. It was good having you here, Hywel. It was good having you all here." He pushed his mazer across the table; it clicked hollowly against Gregory's.

  "Thank you," Gregory said distantly. "Thank you all, very much."

  They boarded the coach and were away, Juliette waving from the yard, a movement at an upstairs window that might have been Stefan, snowshoe hares dashing for cover as the wheels went by.

  When they had gone some distance on the Imperial road, Cynthia asked Dimitrios, "Where is Wallachia?"

  "Two hundred miles as the eagle flies, northwest of the City itself," he said, in a satisfied voice. "Like a finger in the Empire's eye. But they've never been able to take it. The mountains are too hard, and the soldiers harder yet. The Empire won't—can't!—admit it, but there's more than one corner of the world like—"

  "I know," Cynthia said. "How did you know Stefan was from there?"

  "The sword and lance on the wall. No other pattern like that in the world."

  "Wer zerstort ihn die Augen?" Gregory said.

  "He met Juliette in Varna, on the Black Sea," Hywel said, not particularly to Gregory. "She'd been sent to the East as a wife for a Byzantine coronal, a present from the Auvergne strategos."

  "They can do that?" Cynthia said sharply.

  "Some will not," Dimi said.

  Hywel said "Stefan led a raid on the train of... presents from France. But his horse was shot, and he was taken."

  Cynthia said "And the Byzantines infected him?"

  Hywel ran a finger around his glass eye. "He was already a gwaedwr. So are all the lieutenants of the Wallachian warlord... so is the voivode himself, Vlad the Fourth. That was his portrait, in leather on the wall. No. The Byzantine coronal pinned Stefan's eyes open with bronze nails, then tied him facing the sunrise."

  Cynthia tilted her head back, closed her eyes. Gregory looked down, a hand to his face.

  There was silence; then Gregory said "I thank you, Doctor. I was... indeed hungry."

  "Juliette does not have the disorder, as you saw. Nor do their two grown children. You see, when you told me that you had not passed the disease, I believed you."

  "I supposed that How did the Ionescus come to France?"

  "That was partly my doing," Hywel said plainly.

  In a thoughtful tone, Dimitrios said "How long have you been at this enterprise of yours?"

  "Magic is a building of many small efforts toward a final, greater end," Hywel said. "Magic is slow."

  "We're coming to a border," Cynthia said. "Is this English France?"

  "We're entering Touraine," Hywel said, without looking out. "French France. The Partition left two provinces, Anjou and Tour- aine, neither English nor Byzantine."

  "I remember that, a little," Dimi said. "The buffer state."

  "Of a sort," Hywel said. Gregory pulled the cloth from his eyes, replaced his glasses.

  The coach halted, and there was a knock at the door. It was opened by a man holding a ceremonial spear; over his breastplate was a blue velvet tabard diapered with fleurs-de-lis. He bowed slightly, breathed fog. "Good day, gentlemen, lady. May I know your business?"

  "I am Doctor Horace Peregrine," Hywel said, "and the lady is Doctor Caterina Ricardi; we are physicians, on our way to Cherbourg. This gentleman is Gregory, Fachritter von Bayern, an academic associate who has chosen to travel with us. And Hector, there, is our personal guard."

  "To all of you, sir?"

  "To me, sir," Cynthia said. The border guard looked up, then bowed again. He said "Thank you, sirs, madame. Please enjoy your travel, and travel safely."

  The door closed. The coach rolled on, past small but elaborate stone gatehouses to both sides of the road.

  "Very nicely said, Doctor Ricardi," Hywel said. Dimi's eyebrows were raised.

  "I know a little of what looks suspicious," Cynthia said. "One guard for three acquaintances?—And I know what men... understand."

  Dimitrios shook his head, not quite laughing.

  "Angers holds enough nobility to stock a good-sized nation," Hywel said, "or perhaps two. There is Rene, the Duke of Anjou, and his court. There is Louis, King of France, and his court."

  Dimitrios said "They're persistent, at least. The Partition's over three hundred years old."

  "In counting generations, the French heralds are as meticulous as Jews. From the day the Partition was signed, they have preserved every noble line on paper; they know every name of every rightful noble of the France that might be... that still is, in a hypothetical sort of way."

  "But what do all those nobles do?" Cynthia said.

  "What has there always been for the kings of little countries to do? They scheme. The eleventh and current Louis has a talent for it, too—more than a talent. A gift. He sends his envoys to the cities of the world, and they are received as if sent by a real king on a real throne—even the bankers did, and you would have thought them to have had more sense. I am sorry, Lady Cynthia."

  "It's all right," Cynthia said. "Ser Lorenzo and his father spoke often of 'poor Louis' and his bad debts. I don't remember them ever calling him a king, though.. .just a risk they chose to take."

  "The same reason his ambassadors are received," Hywel said.

  Dimitrios said "All children play at kings and queens, but there's an English army to the west and a Byzantine army to the east, and they aren't made of toy soldiers."

  "Duke Rene had a daughter, Margaret," Hywel said, "who married a man named Henry. The marriage had some qualities of a game, but Henry the Sixth and Margaret of Anjou really were King and Queen of England."

  "Shouldn't Anjou then have become an English property?"

  "The English councillors who helped arrange the thing must have had that in mind—you see, Anjou occupies an awkward place on the map, thrusting into the midsection of England's territories, a thorn in the flank."

  Dimi said "That's Byzantine mapmaking."
>
  "Yes. It certainly wasn't Henry the Second's idea. But... Henry's most recent namesake didn't inherit many of his ancestor's qualities. He was an... ineffectual person."

  Cynthia said "Do you mean impotent?"

  "No. Disinterested, possibly, but Margaret did have a son, of undoubted parentage. No, I mean weak-willed, which is only a fault in common men but a disaster in kings. Margaret, however, had enough will for the both of them and a kingdom besides."

  Cynthia said "How much of a fault is that?"

  Hywel laughed. "None at all. Especially if you are Louis the Eleventh of Nowhere, and you would like an army of Englishmen to fight an army of Byzantines over two countries you would like to rule yourself. The foreigners collide, are disorganized, and the people rise in rebellion—"

  "And it will not end in Paris, it will not end in Gaul, blah, blah, blah," Dimitrios said dryly. "I know that principle. But it did not happen."

  "No. Because Richard Plantagenet, the English Duke of York, started a civil war to prosecute his own claims to the throne, and not incidentally against 'the foreign Queen.' Civil wars are very distracting."

  Gregory said "And the Yorks won."

  "It was more complicated than that. Richard of York was killed in the war, as was one of his sons. The other three sons kept fighting... and eventually, just over sixteen years ago, one of them became Edward the Fourth, long live the King."

  Dimi said "The Sun Lord? I've heard he was a very great leader, a marvelous general."

  "True enough, though Henry wasn't any sort of leader and Margaret scarcely had the chance. It was not a very grand war, militarily.

  "The Royal House of Lancaster fled to Angers, and lived in the same mock pomp as everyone else there for nine years. Then they put together a force of disaffected English—who are always to be found in Brittany and the Cotentin—and came back to England, where they deposed Edward and ruled for a year."

  "How?"

  "Byzantium," Cynthia said.

  "Edward's brother George," Hywel said.

  Dimi said "One reason civil wars are so distracting is that the enemy so often names himself with his steel in your back.... For only a year, you said?"

  "Edward assembled his own little army, with Italian money and some Danish ships, and crossed the Channel. And brother George turned his coat back. There were two very bad battles. Henry's son was killed, and Henry was taken to the Tower of London, where someone shortly murdered him. I've no idea who."

  Gregory said "It is hard to rule a country with two kings."

  Hywel said "And a little after that, Rene ransomed his daughter back home, where she has been ever since."

  Cynthia said "I'm surprised Louis didn't try to marry her to Edward."

  "He'd already tried that, with his daughter-in-law. It was all arranged, through Richard Neville, the Earl of Warwick, one of the nicest schemers in England: Edward would take the crown and a French princess, all in a week's time. Then Warwick was told that the King already had a Queen, a knight's widow he'd married in secret. A Lancastrian knight's widow, at that. Warwick went purple and Bona of Savoy went elsewhere."

  "Bona," Cynthia said unsteadily. "She went to Italy, didn't she? She married Galeazzo Maria Sforza, the Duke of Milan."

  "Yes, she did."

  Cynthia said "Does every marriage in the world have troops behind it?"

  "Above the rank of Baron, just about all…Look." Hywel pointed out the window.

  To the right was a stone curtain wall, over forty feet high, with more than a dozen cylindrical towers along its length; the towers were banded, black and white. Spires rose from within the wall, sharp against the red evening sky. Just beyond the fortress, lanterns and watchfires flickered from the dark surface of the river Loire.

  "The Chateau d'Angers," Hywel said. "All a country's royal palaces, in one place."

  The street was narrow and dark, but fairly clean, and the air was pleasant with kitchen smells and some strong, spicy, unidentifiable aroma.

  Hywel paused beneath a sign: a copper relief of a three-legged cauldron, with painted leather steam rising from it. Hywel knocked at the door, which opened a little.

  "Peredur!" said the man within, then more quietly, "Peredur. Come in. Come in, all of you."

  The man who led them in was short, and extremely bent; he walked with a scuttling motion and from any distance seemed dwarfish. His nose was large and straight, his grin crooked, his eyes receding below a heavy brow. Hywel introduced him as Quentin le Chaudronnier, "that rarity, a genuine alchemiker."

  Gregory said politely, "By which you mean he can turn lead to gold?"

  "By which I mean he does not claim to do so. Quentin, I heard you had news for me."

  The twisted mouth turned down. "Yes, and not good news, either. Come back, all of you, where it's warm."

  The rear of the house was very warm and steamy, and the source of the exotic smell outside; indoors, it filled the nostrils and then the head. Half a dozen metal cauldrons boiled on red fires. Glass flasks by the hundreds, in every shape and color, were racked on the walls. There were bins and jars of dried plants, and bunches of leaves and stems were suspended from the ceiling.

  Quentin paused by one of the vats, arching his shoulders even further. "This one needs a moment, Peredur. Take them up."

  Hywel led the others through a tight-fitting door and up an enclosed flight of stone steps, to a pillared hall; intricate chemical apparatus covered tables and shelves.

  "Don't sit on a table, whatever you do," Hywel said. "And be very careful of puddles."

  Dimitrios leaned a hand against one of the pillars, then pulled away; he tested the surface with his fingertips. "Chimneys," he said, and rested a leather-covered shoulder comfortably against the stone. "What does he do in the summer?"

  "Research," Quentin said, entering from the stairwell. "In the countryside, where there is no one to smell my mistakes." He held out a small spray of dried blooms to Cynthia. "Crocus, Miss Ricci, and fennel, and rosemary. I knew your father, just a little; there is plenty of gout in Angers. How is the Doctor?"

  "Dead, Master Quentin," she said calmly.

  "Oh." Le Chaudronnier looked down, his arms dipping, puppetlike. Cynthia reached out and took the plants. "Rosemary," she said, "for memory's sake." Quentin looked up, brightened a little.

  Then he turned to Hywel. "Now my bad news, Peredur. the exemplification, Clarence's paper—it does exist. Queen Margaret has it, and she means to use it against him."

  "Who is Clarence?" Dimi said.

  "George Plantagenet, the Duke of Clarence," Hywel said. "The King's untrustworthy brother." Then to Quentin, "Why now?"

  "You haven't heard? Ah, you've been in the East again. Well. The Duke's been half out of his mind since his wife and son died a year ago. He talked about marrying a French heiress, someone from Burgundy—"

  Dimitrios scowled.

  "—and then he... arranged a judicial murder. Some poor woman, one of the Duchess's servants, was dragged from her bed, accused of poisoning the Lady, tried and hanged, all in a single morning. They did the same to a man, for killing the boy."

  Quentin turned his face away. His shoulders tightened. "There's gossip everywhere, some of it very gleeful, but I know this is true. King Louis called me in and told me the story."

  "Why you?" Cynthia said.

  Without facing her, le Chaudronnier said "Because according to the testimony, the Duchess was given the poison more than nine weeks before she died of it. Louis wanted to know if there was such a slow poison, and if so, if I could make it for him."

  "And is there?" Dimitrios said.

  Cynthia said "Of course not!" No one spoke; the bubbling of the cauldrons below was faintly audible.

  Awkwardly, le Chaudronnier said "I apologize, my lady; your father of course told me you were a doctor as well, but I had forgotten."

  "No harm done, Master Quentin."

  He nodded. "There was more gossip. Accusations of death by magic, the Duk
e interrupting a royal council, even a rebellion, I heard."

  "Another one," Hywel said flatly.

  "They are saying that the King of England is very angry, and perhaps his brother has lived too long."

  "Done too much for one life, certainly. And the exemplification will not help Edward's temper." Hywel looked around at the others.

  "I've told you that Clarence supported Henry the Sixth during the year's Readeption. Since then there has been a rumor of a document, under Henry's seal, that gave Clarence the crown of England should Henry leave no male heirs—as he did not. It was his price, apparently, for helping the Lancastrians back to power." Hywel turned to Quentin. "Do you have the correspondences?"

  "Yes."

  "Get them."

  Quentin gave Hywel a strange look, seemed about to protest, but scuttled off.

  "Clear this table," Hywel said, indicating one with a square top of heavy dark glass. Dimitrios moved glassware and Gregory stacked and shifted papers.

  "Surely the Duke couldn't depose his brother on the basis of one paper," Cynthia said.

  "It has taken less," Gregory said.

  "And Clarence is silly enough to try," Hywel said. "But that's not the intent. The document isn't for George's use anymore—as if Henry and Margaret ever intended he use it. It's for Edward, and the courts of law."

  Quentin reappeared, carrying a roll of paper and several smaller items. He brought a little spirit lamp from another table, and handed a box and a small steel file to Dimitrios. "This is ink, the formula Louis uses for official papers. File it down to powder. Professor von Bayern, can you do a good formal script?"

  "Good enough," Gregory said, and was handed a pen and vial of liquid ink.

  Hywel unrolled the paper, weighted it at the corners. "The date would be... the July or August before they sailed. August, I think. Less time for George to change his mind. And the year still counted from Henry's original crowning. August, 33 Henry VI. Inscribe that here, please, Gregory. And here: Henry VI Rex Britanni, Margaret Regina, George Clarencis. You're not trying to forge their signatures, understand, just establish points of correspondence."