The Dragon Waiting

by John M. Ford

  Suddenly, Hywel said to Gregory, "Have you fed recently?"

  Gregory put down his piece of bread, still unfinished. Without inflection, he said "Not on anyone you know."

  "Hugh Wetherby will see that you're saved the blood from the kitchen, Doctor," the Duchess said. "No one else will know."

  "Thank you, geehrte Frau. It is difficult, in cities... there are no large wild animals, and many people. That is... it is difficult to take the hard path." He looked at Hywel. "Did you think I would go to her?" His tone was merely curious. "She would kill me."

  Cecily said "Her pain, you said, Hywel...what are you not telling us?"

  "Nothing that I may say."

  "But something you could say."

  Hywel spoke quite coolly. "What I learn in certain ways I do not repeat. It is an essential rule. Wizards who will not keep rules... Gregory, you saw the Frenchman die. And, Cecily, I think you recall, at Wakefield, in the snow "

  The Duchess's lip trembled. Then she said "And what of Doctor Ricci? How far does the rule extend?"

  "I can do things I may not do," Hywel said sharply. "I didn't say I'd let her die."

  "Where I am," Gregory said, "there is no death. What are we going to do?"

  When the young man who would become Edward IV fought his first great battle, a strange thing happened in the sky overhead: three suns shone together. Edward's advisors were still divided as to whether this was a sign from the gods or a refraction phenomenon of the "sundog" variety. Edward himself played no favorites: he went from no particular faith to the earnest worship of Phoebus Apollo, in time constructing a new hall in the London Pantheon, and endowed a school of opticks at Minerva College, Oxford.

  The London Apollonium was triangular, with a solar disc displayed at each corner, and a lavish use of gold leaf on virtually every surface, including the seats; it was said to be the only place on earth where wearing out one's clothes increased their value.

  The centerpiece of the hall was a paneled dome of clear glass, designed by the Oxonian scientists. It projected a shaft of milk- white light downward, casting glory upon the central altar, and now, as the sun reached the meridian, beams were thrown to the corner discs, and thence reflected again, creating a three-sided halo of pure radiance.

  The little Duke of York and his bride Anne Mowbray were standing in the downward light; the sword on the golden marble floor before them shone like a sunray. Thomas Bourchier, Edward's high priest, intoned the verses of the ceremony, standing like a pillar in white samite and several pounds of gold. Next to him stood Edward, with the Lyons of England and a rayed sun on his broad chest; as Sun Lord he was fully as important to the ceremony as Bourchier, not considering the power temporal he represented, or that they were anyway brothers-in-law.

  A little behind Edward was the Queen, Elizabeth Woodville. Gold ropes on her gown emphasized her striking figure, and her yellow hair was combed high, set with tiny gold mirrors. She looked out at the audience, not at the bride and groom, and quite unlike the King's there was no interest in her look.

  The bride's parents were not on the dais. Her father, the Duke of Norfolk, Earl of Nottingham and Warenne, Earl Marshal of England, was dead two years almost to the day, her mother a little less. There was a great-grandmother in Norwich, but she was not present; rheumatism or something. Not that there was any shortage of nobility. The temple was packed with lords assembled for Parliament. Little Anne's father's dukedom and earldoms had been transferred over the past eighteen months, and the recipient was very much in evidence. Anne was marrying him.

  Thomas Bourchier lowered his arms, linked the couple's hands. A pair of pages moved up silently to help them hop over the sword. The high priest whispered to Anne Mowbray Plantagenet, and she turned and planted a kiss on Richard of Salisbury's lips. He goggled back in utter bewilderment.

  The audience stood and cheered. Some of the great ladies were crying, as always at weddings.

  Three sets of footsteps echoed through the twisting halls of the White Tower, coming to a stop at an iron cell door. A key was put into the lock, turned.

  "Leave us alone now, Simon," said Richard of Gloucester to the turnkey. "What you don't hear no one can ask you to tell."

  "O'course, Your Grace," the man said, and with a nod to the Duke and Hywel Peredur, he went off down the hall.

  The room was fairly well appointed, for a prison cell. There was a small fire with a scuttle of sea-coal nearby, an honest bed, a small pile of books. A wooden platter held some bits of drying cheese and apple cores.

  George, Duke of Clarence, turned away from the barred window. He wore a plain brown gown belted with cord, leather slippers. His brown hair was to his shoulders, and his beard had grown, but his face was unlined and his eyes were bright. "Hello, Dick. Come all this way to watch them hang me? And you've brought a friendly ghost along. Hello, Magister."

  Hywel closed the door. Richard said "George... it's serious this time."

  "With you it's always serious, Richard. Games, and tilting at the ring, and making bastard babies were all very serious with you. And putting Edward on the throne, that was seriousest of all. What's he sent you in here to do, Dick? Kill me quick? That certainly makes sense. If Parliament should vote wrong, you'd be years in killing all of them."

  "George... why do you try to make me angry?"

  "That's like the seriousness, Dick; everything makes you angry, nobody has to try. All right, I fought you; I helped Warwick throw you out of the country. I did it, and I lost, and I know what that sort of loser gets. Just like Henry.... Tell me something, Dick, about old Henry—was it you then, too?"

  Richard threw a punch at his brother. George put up his arm to block; Richard swept his other fist down and caught George on the side of the head, knocking him to the floor.

  George got to his hands and knees. Both brothers were breathing very hard. Richard held out his hand, helped George up. George sat down again, still panting.

  "George," Richard said, "Peredur... has a question... for you. About the paper... with Henry and Margaret."

  "Oh... that. If you want to know why a man signs his own death warrant, I don't know. Stupidity, I suppose, but it seemed like a wonderful idea at the time."

  "The document was destroyed," Hywel said. "Margaret was trying to send it to England."

  "Destroyed?" George said, looking up. "Edward doesn't have it? The court won't see it?"

  "She was sending it by magic," Hywel went on. "We stopped it. But we need to know whom she was sending it to, who would have taken it to the court."

  "You stopped... oh, gods, Dick. I didn't... I mean, I'm sorry."

  Richard started to speak. Hywel touched his shoulder; Gloucester said nothing.

  Clarence was looking around the room with a wondering expression. "Sent it to... you mean a wizard?"

  "Very likely. Perhaps a wizard-astrologer."

  Clarence stopped still. "Stacy." He shook his head. "But Stacy's dead."

  "John Stacy of Oxford?" Hywel said. Clarence nodded. "He's dead?" Another nod.

  "You have been away," Richard said. "Last May, Doctor Stacy, and the Thoth-priest at his college, and George's man Tom Burdett were all arrested for plotting to kill Edward by magics. Edward put together a high commission especially to try them; there were a dozen barons on it, and five earls. Talk about the majesty of the law."

  "Tom was innocent," George said. "I had his oath."

  Richard said dryly, "And of all the men in England to read his statement to the Lords, you chose the same loudmouth who read all London Henry's case for usurping us."

  "He was... a philosopher," Clarence said blankly. "He only said what he thought was right."

  Hywel said quietly, "Did Edward order a guilty verdict?"

  "Yes," Richard said roughly, "I suppose he did. Of course, this was a month after George had the Twynho woman dragged out of her bed and hanged, in the speed record for legal process."

  Clarence reached out with both hands, caught bo
th Hywel and Gloucester by the sleeves. "You weren't there when Isabel died," he said, on the edge of a sob. "She just lay there, couldn't move, couldn't lift her hands... and when I kissed her, I could taste the poison on her breath. It tasted of fruit, and she hadn't had fruit.

  She was so long dying... in such pain Maybe I went mad; I won't deny it if you say so." He closed his eyes, and the tears ran. "Now I'm scared, Dick. I've lost a kingdom, and Bel, and everything. Sweet Venus, I'm scared." He looked at his brother, tightened his grip on Richard's sleeve, smiled crookedly. "Edward will get his verdict even without the silly paper, you know. But... thanks, Dick."

  Gloucester did not speak, move, blink. Then he turned to Hywel and said "I'll get Simon." He pulled free of George's grip and went out of the cell.

  Hywel and Richard emerged from the Tower into a bright, cold January day. From across the city, the sounds of music and cheering were drifting on the air, from the revels at young York's wedding.

  "Do you think Doctor Stacy is your man?" Richard asked.

  "I don't know. Surely Louis must have known about the trial, but that hardly means Margaret did."

  "Could they have sent the paper to a dead man?"

  "To any correctly prepared location, whether or not anyone was there." Hywel shook his head. "I'm really looking for the man Margaret thought I was. The moon was full over all of Britain that night; this seemed as good a place as any to start."

  Richard was not looking at him. "Maybe he did go mad, when he lost Bel," the Duke said intently. "She was my Annie's sister, you know... maybe he went mad. But too late for it to save him. What do you think, Peredur, wizard? What might Edward and George and I have done? If we'd hung together, I mean?"

  Hywel said "I didn't mean to make you lie, just then."

  "It was my doing," Richard said. "I've always wondered what it would be like... if my brother loved me."

  Cynthia Ricci could just see the London Pantheon from her upper-floor room in Baynard's Castle. Unlike the other Pantheons she had seen, it was not a single building sacred to all gods; it was a hundred or more individual temples run together. Every few years, Duchess Cecily said, a noble or wealthy merchant built a new hall to his or her favorite deity, even if that faith already had a temple in an outdated or rundown style. The result was a riot of materials and architectures, a great holy maze that rambled and arched and cloistered and thrust towers at the heavens. According to Dimi, the Mithraists had their cavern elsewhere in the city, but its exact location was a Mystery.

  Cynthia watched the wedding party spilling out from the Apollonium with its shining dome. Horns and drums and whistles were audible from here. She put down her hairbrush, sipped at cold tea with honey. There was an untouched chunk of bread near the cup, its butter going rancid.

  Behind her, the door clicked. She turned, still holding the tea.

  Gregory came in. He was lightly dressed as always, in an unfastened gown and a white linen shirt open at the neck.

  "If you would draw the curtain," he said softly, "I could remove my glasses."

  She pulled the heavy drape across the window. He lifted the wire frames from his nose and ears, massaged the spots where they had rested. "Danke sehr. They are a burden." He sat down, sighed. "Everything is a burden, not so? Life is a burden."

  "Is something the matter?" Cynthia said, without feeling.

  Gregory squinted, looked at the bedside table, the buttered bread. "I see you know what it means when food loses its flavor. I know that, well. Chickens' blood. Pigs' blood. A diet of kitchen offal does not sharpen one's taste."

  Cynthia looked down, at the blackred tea in her cup. She set it aside. "You told me that you—"

  "I say many things. Most of them are true. This one is true: it is good to survive. Das Leben ist lieblich. You are a healer, a good one, Fraulein Doktor; do you not think life is better than death?"

  She stood up. "Gregory, are you well?"

  "Well? Ja, 'bin ganz wohl. There is no disease that can afflict me, no drug poison me. I will live for a long time Who knows how long. But you tell me, Fraulein Doktor, what good is long life when all taste for life is gone? Who would live forever on a diet of pigs' blood?"

  Her head turned sharply, toward her medical bag across the room. Gregory followed the glance, smiled. He stood, walked toward her. She sidestepped unsteadily. Gregory reached to the nightstand, picked up the knife that lay next to the bread. He held it loosely in one hand, squeezed. The steel blade bent into waves between his thumb and fingers. "Ach." A line of blood, pale pink, showed on his index finger. He put the finger into the teacup, stirred, drew it out and licked it clean.

  Cynthia said "I'll—"

  "Will you? You have said that you know how, but can you?"

  "—scream. I do... know how... to scream." She stood absolutely rigid, save for a tiny tremor at the tips of her fingers.

  "But who will hear? They are all at the wedding, or the prison. We are alone." His voice became very gentle. "Is that not the problem? We are both alone."

  She relaxed just a little, and said slowly, "There are... quills... in my kit. I can help, Gregory. I'm a doctor. You're ill, that's all."

  "That is anything but all. Even supposing it is a quill you mean to offer me, not the scalpel"—her eyes flicked sidewise—"do you think that is all I need? Hunger is only put off a while, I know that. I have not always drunk from chickens and pigs."

  He looked at the darkened window, stroked the drape. "A city is an impossible place for one like me. Too many walls, too many lights, too many people close together. Like being smothered by food." He shook his head. "Have you heard of this country to the north, Scotland? They say the people live far apart. A traveler vanishes in the mountains, and a thousand things may have happened. It is cold, I hear, but cold is nothing to me. And they admire strength." He picked up the wavy knife, squeezed again. It broke with a sharp sound. Cynthia shuddered briefly, then controlled herself.

  She said "I've known many people with chronic diseases." Her voice was quite steady. "They all have bad days, doubtful days. Why don't you—"

  "A fascinating word, chronic. It means of time. A disease of time, that is the truth." He spoke intensely: "The only problem, the only one, is that one is such a long time lonely." He reached out, touched his white hand to her white cheek, tenderly.

  "You had better go to your own room, Gregory," she said, with barely restrained anger. "You had better rest quietly for a while. That's medical advice."

  He let his hand fall. "Perhaps not the only problem.... When one is strong, nothing taken by force has any value. The blood of dumb beasts. Do not think what you are thinking; I would not do that. I am patient. I can afford to be."

  He put on his glasses, closed his gown, and went out.

  She stood there until she began to tremble; then she sank down to the floor and sat. She did not scream, or cry, or do anything but breathe deeply and evenly. Then she kicked the broken pieces of the knife under the bed, and cursed in Latin.

  Duchess Cecily was drinking tea and reading from Malory's Arthur when Gregory came downstairs. She looked up from her book without speaking.

  "I cannot promise she will go to Wales," Gregory said, "but I do not think she will go to Scotland."

  The Duchess nodded. "Are you all right, Doctor von Bayern?"

  "I am all right. Though while I spoke to her..." He laughed once, ash-dry. "In fact, I am well. I told you, I have given this... performance... before. It is not all play-act, of course; I am the hungry animal, I know. But this time, the reason was better than hunger Yes, I think I am well."

  The Duchess smiled and turned a page in her book.

  Gregory said "My Lady... why did you think the Doctor would reject me? Others... have not."

  Cecily said "You are not so unattractive. And Hywel is a wise man in more than the conventional sense, but there are things he does not always see. A time back, you said that Cynthia would kill you if you attacked her; that is right. She's not a hol
low vessel needing someone to fill her; she's a knight needing a quest. For her soul's sake." She paused, looking at the illustration on the book page, of jousters riding one another down. "That's why she must go with Hywel: there are better quests than war."

  King Edward IV showed a darker splendor in Parliament than he had displayed in the temple the day before. He wore the lyons and the shining sun on blood-red velvet, and he did not sit in a shaft of light, and he did not smile at all as he read the Bill.

  "The said duke nevertheless, for all this no love increasing but growing daily in more and more malice..."

  "I'll agree with that part," Richard said to Hywel.

  "... intended and purposed firmly the extreme destruction and disheri' ting of the King..."

  "Extremely destroyed. How destroyed is that?"

  "... upon the falsest and most unnatural-colored pretense that man might imagine, falsely and untruly noised, published and said, that the King our sovereign lord was a bastard..."

  Duchess Cecily murmured "Is that a sop to me, Edward? Your father and I used to compare those stories... in bed." Cecily turned, patted Cynthia's hand. Cynthia smiled faintly, from somewhere far away.

  "And over this, the said duke obtained and got an exemplification under the great seal of King Harry the Sixth..."

  Hywel closed his eyes. Dimitrios stared. Richard smiled.

  "For which premises and causes the King, by the advice and assent of his Lords spiritual and temporal..."

  Richard said "Never kill a brother without the gods' approval."

  "... and the Commons..."

  "And especially not theirs."

  "... ordaineth, enacteth, and established that the said George, duke of Clarence, be convicted and attainted of high treason, and shall forfeit from him and his heirs forever the honor, estates, dignity, and name of duke..."