The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  Robin—Lord Robin—was putty in her hands, like an apprentice boy in Harndon. She looked past him. “Nell? Get me two more pages.”

  Nell might have put her foot down, but she was a careful young woman and she knew when good work was being done.

  “We got two hundred wet an’ hungry horses, Blanche,” she said. “You can ha’ me for an hour.”

  Trailed by two very young maids, Blanche and Nell proceeded to pass through the rooms of the upper citadel like an avenging army. Blanche simply reeled off the rooms to the men on Toby’s list. She did them in the order he’d written them.

  Then she paused and, propped on a doorframe, wrote all the Queen’s ladies and servants, as best she knew them.

  “Nell, get me Becca Almspend,” she said.

  Nell ran.

  There were voices—laughter. The beautiful young man—perhaps the handsomest she’d ever seen—was Galahad D’Acon. She knew him from the old court, one of the Queen’s squires. The heartthrob of every laundry maid.

  “North tower, blue room, first floor,” she said. “You share with Diccon Twig and any other messengers. Tell the maids what to fetch—they’re overwhelmed. Be nice, Messer D’Acon.”

  She realized in the middle of speaking that he could treat her as a laundress and it would all unravel. But he grinned.

  “Yes, Lady Blanche,” he said. He bowed. “Diccon!” he roared down the stairs. “We have a room!”

  As the rest of the nobles came down, she took them aside and gave them room assignments—explaining to each the difficulties.

  By the time she reached Prior Wishart, Cook had numbers for dinner, Lord Gregario Wayland had volunteered a town house that would sleep a dozen other gentlemen in comfort, and had even offered to send linens and feather beds to the citadel. Blanche accepted them all. The Grand Squire—Shawn LeFleur, a man of impeccable courtesy—was instantly understanding when she tried him in private and discreet as a mouse when the Queen asked him what the trouble was. The pages had already found him an empty house and had his own retinue scrubbing and stripping it. People were backing her. It felt heavenly.

  The Grand Squire began to be flirtatious. Blanche smiled and moved firmly on to her next task.

  “Blanche,” Lady Almspend said. “You called?”

  Blanche was aware that she’d just summoned the Queen’s best friend but, on the other hand, Lady Almspend was the very perfection of practicality in all things.

  “My lady,” she began.

  “Becca,” the lady in question insisted. “We may all be eaten by boglins. We can use each other’s first names.”

  “Becca, I’m sorting rooms and I don’t know the new ladies.” Blanche pointed at her list.

  Becca put a hand to her mouth. A spurt of laughter escaped.

  “Which I had to call them something,” Blanche said weakly.

  Becca took the list and gravely pressed the wax flat. “Lady Fashion is Natalia de Wayland—Lord Gregario’s wife. She can sew, Blanche—she’s not a useless pretty face. The ‘talkative’ one is Lady Emma. The ‘Bean Pole’ is Lady Briar, and she would not thank you for that description. ‘White Wimple’ must be her daughter—pretty?”

  “Yes,” said Blanche.

  “Ella or Hella. One of those. They can all go in one room. Well, Natalia will no doubt go with Lord Gregario. And I expect we’ll put Rowan the wet nurse with the Queen.”

  “And you, my lady?” Blanche asked with a straight face. On the road, Lady Becca had been with her Ranald every night, but the road had different rules.

  Becca smiled. “Give me a very small closet and I’ll pretend to stay in it,” she said pleasantly. “Where are you staying?” she asked.

  Blanche paused. She had entirely forgotten herself.

  “Good, we’ll share,” Becca said. “North Tower, highest floor. There’s only Ser Gabriel and the Queen, which is perfect for both of us.”

  Blanche searched her tone for a hint of innuendo and found none.

  “It will only get worse, Blanche. The Count of the Borders is a three-day march away and with him will be the Jarsay nobles—who were in revolt before and are now loyal—and Gabriel’s brother Gavin, who is, I gather, the new Earl of Westwall.” She pulled her spectacles off her nose. “I’ll help tomorrow. Sufficient unto the day are the evils thereto—and I smell dinner. You have been magnificent.”

  Blanche sagged.

  “Oh, no, you don’t,” Becca said. “Dinner—with the lords and ladies, or the servants will be on you like leeches. Come!” She dragged Blanche down a flight of stairs.

  Blanche had expected pot house stew for a hundred. Instead, she found that the soup course was a fine egg yolk soup with rosewater and candied orange peel—fit for her mistress, delicious and beautifully served by twenty squires under Lord Robin.

  “Where’s Toby?” she whispered.

  “Making sure the pages are fed.” Robin smiled. “Go and eat.”

  Pork pies rolled out next, and Blanche recognized that Cook must be serving prepared food—emptying the larder. She ate with gusto.

  The turkey with raspberries was superb, and the Queen glowed and toasted her knights. The court ate voraciously, as men and women who have been in the saddle days on end will do, and drank to match.

  “Cook wishes a word,” whispered a voice in her ear and was gone, and she smiled at her neighbour—the Grand Squire, now so polite as to be near to flirtatious—rose and slipped away along the table, pausing to offer a good curtsey to the Queen.

  The Queen had her hand on the Red Knight’s hand.

  A sliver of ice went down her back, and she cursed.

  The Red Knight turned and met Blanche’s eye across the table. He had candles behind him, which gave him an incongruous halo. He smiled—and went back to talking to the Queen.

  Damn him.

  Nicomedes intercepted her at the head of the stairs.

  “We’ll go together,” he said.

  She smiled, and they walked down the broad serving stairs—so like the stairs at the palace in Harndon, she thought. They went down one flight and turned into the kitchen, which was more than half the size of the great hall, with two great fires roaring. The heat was enormous, but not unwelcome in late spring.

  Cook came up, wiping her hands.

  “That’s all my food, served,” she said. “Now what do we do?”

  “Buy more?” Master Nicomedes said patiently.

  Cook eyed him suspiciously. “Who are you, any road?”

  Blanche nodded. “He is the Queen’s master of household. And the captain’s.”

  “What captain?”

  “The Duke of Thrake,” said Master Nicomedes.

  “Oh!” said Cook.

  “Give me or any of my people a list by first light and we’ll have it on your work tables by matins,” Nicomedes said. “I have household stores of my own.”

  “Saffron? Sugar?” Cook asked. “I’m out.”

  Blanche decided to stay to her role and pushed away the image of the Queen’s hand on the Red Knight’s. “As you seem settled, I’ll return to my dinner,” she said.

  Nicomedes, a gallant man, bowed. “My lady,” he said.

  But escape was not so easy, and Goodwife Elizabeth was waiting for her at the stairs.

  “I’m out of linens and straw pallets and bed cases and towels—and everything else.” She looked defiant, as if being out of things justified defiance.

  It was professional anger that made Blanche bridle, not false gentility. The laundry in the palace of Harndon had never, ever run out of anything. “Get more,” she snapped.

  “But where!” asked the woman who must be the laundress or some such.

  Blanche snapped her fingers. “There must be lords and ladies hereabouts who would be honoured to spare the Queen a bed sheet or two,” she said. “Or summon your women and get sewing.”

  “There’s no spare linen. Lady, we’re poor. We don’t have the resources of a palace.” She bowed her head, humili
ated, and Blanche felt terrible.

  “I’m sorry, Goodwife. Listen—I’ll ask among the squires. Many of these gentlemen go to war very well appointed.” She put a hand on the woman’s arm and was horrified to hear a sob.

  She buttonholed Toby and sent the squires scurrying for more sheets—for any spare linen not made up. She passed the great hall only long enough to find a cup of wine pressed into her hand and a bit of apple tart. She drank the one, ate the other, and found one of Sukey’s girls holding a great bolt of linen—forty yards at least.

  “Miss Sukey says her best compliments an’ will this help.” The young woman was not dressed for a palace but for a tavern, and the squires proved suddenly unable to do any work. Blanche smiled, took the roll of linen, and said, “Please go straight back and tell her that, as always, I owe her. This goes on the Queen’s account. Can you sew?”

  The young woman—Blanche’s age or maybe younger—shook her head and grinned. “I can make a shift if someone else cuts it,” she said.

  Blanche laughed. “Tell Sukey I’ll take every woman who can sew that she can spare.”

  The next time Blanche passed the great hall it was to answer a call direct from the Queen.

  She found the queen in her chambers. They were fully appointed—bedspread, hangings, two good mattresses and a feather bed, counterpane and two beautiful blankets.

  She and Lady Almspend and Lady Briar undressed the Queen, re-swaddled the baby and got the Queen in and out of a hot bath. Blanche, without thinking, swept all the Queen’s linens into a bundle, wrapped it with the zone that the queen wore under her breasts, and—

  Becca Almspend stripped it out of her hands. “That will save the girl a mort of work,” she said, laughing.

  Lady Briar—older, but new to court—smiled. “You must teach me to do that. It will save time.” She grinned. She had a large but very pleasant mouth and more teeth than many. “Papa said we’d be worked like servants—but I didn’t realize how good you’d be at it. I feel like a third wheel.”

  Becca smiled at Blanche. “We’ve had lots of practice and we’re happy to have you, Briar,” she said.

  It was all Blanche could manage not to carry the bundle down the stairs. But before she was all the way to the great hall—her third visit—she passed a pair of laundry maids going up. They curtsied and she felt a fraud.

  The commanders were all in the great hall. One fireplace was roaring, and all her seamstresses were there—twenty women and one archer, all sewing like mad.

  She was surprised—and pleased—when Lady Briar and her daughter came, got stools fetched by squires, and opened their sewing kits. Lady Natalia was already there, her needle moving as fast as a professional seamstress’s.

  “Not enough sheets?” the daughter asked. “Happened at home, too.”

  She giggled. She was perhaps a year younger than Blanche.

  Blanche opened her own sewing kit—a two-fold wallet with a fortune in tools and needles—set it on her knee, took up a sheet and began to hem.

  “Blessed Virgin you are fast!” young Ella proclaimed. “I’ve never seen a lady hem like you. Look at her stitches, Mama!”

  Briar was recounting a tale of her youth—a youth that couldn’t have been so very long before—and she paused, shrugged, and went back to her story.

  Lady Natalia leaned over to Blanche. “You do stitch uncommon fine,” she said.

  “You, too, Lady,” Blanche said. Indeed, she’d never seen a lady—an actual member of the nobility—who could sew as well as Lady Natalia.

  The new sheets took shape at the speed of needlecraft.

  At the other end of the hall, there was a commotion. It was near midnight—the Bishop of Albinkirk and Prior Wishart were sharing a table, and both writing furiously.

  Toby came through the great hall doors. He was very well dressed for the middle of the night, in a fine jupon and a hood.

  “He’s coming,” Toby said. “Right now.”

  The hall fell silent, as if something sacred had occurred. Like the moment at which the host is raised at mass, Blanche thought.

  As if her thoughts had been said aloud, Gabriel turned and saw her. She rose like a servant and went to his side.

  He rose for her. “You should fetch the Queen,” he said. “We’re about to receive a prince.”

  “Her brother?” Blanche asked—but she knew he was already in the field, covering the northern approach to the town with his knights and a small force of infantry.

  She ran. There was urgency in it, and she ran up three long flights of twisting tower stairs and found Becca combing out the Queen’s magnificent hair while Lady Natalia stared into a trunk of clothes.

  “My lady,” she said. “The Duke of Thrake sends that we are about to receive a foreign prince, and bids you come, if’n you would.”

  “Gown,” snapped the Queen. “Yes—brown. Good. Both of you button it while I put my hair up.”

  In two minutes they were in the hall. The Queen was barefoot—unthinkable in Harndon, and merely practical here. Lady Natalia and Lady Almspend went back to the better light to sew.

  The hush remained on the hall. At the far end, in the firelight, the company women stitched away on baby clothes. Nearer, the Red Knight stood between the Prior and the bishop. The other magnates were already abed.

  Toby came back in and bowed to the Queen as Lord Robin and Lord Wimarc settled her onto the chair that could act as a throne—and put the other great chair in the hall opposite her.

  “Who is it?” the Queen asked.

  The Red Knight came and stood beside her. “The Faery Knight,” he said. “And Harmodius.”

  Tapio entered with Harmodius at his side. A little behind them were two irks, a huge adversarius in a feather cloak, and the black man from Ifriquy’a who had saved Blanche in Harndon, as well as a second black man, this one in paint and feathers like an Outwaller. Behind the Outwaller were two great bears and a—she had trouble swallowing—a giant white stick figure, like an enormous praying mantis in white armour.

  She overcame her fear and hurried to Pavalo’s side and pressed his hand—he put his hands together and bowed, but his eyes were on Harmodius. She had missed an exchange, but then the Faery Knight strode forward in a swirl of elfin cloak and a ringing of tiny golden bells, and knelt. He inclined his head, kissed the Queen’s hand, and smiled, showing a few too many teeth.

  “Daughter of man, your beauty isss everything report hasss made it.”

  She blushed. “I saw you at Yule!” She paused, and leaned forward to kiss him on both cheeks. “You, too, are beautiful, Son of the Wild.”

  “There’s the biter, bit,” Harmodius grumbled.

  “I would never have known you, old friend,” she said. He came forward and knelt at her feet, and kissed her hand.

  “I have taken another body,” he said, without preamble or defence.

  The Bishop of Albinkirk winced.

  “For the moment, it is enough that you live, and have come back to me.” Desiderata got to her feet, and threw her arms around the magister’s spare frame—and the older man blushed.

  “Oh, how I have missed you,” Desiderata said.

  “Your grace,” Harmodius said, and found himself stroking her hair. He pulled his hand away.

  “Have you returned to be my minister?” she asked. “Or merely to visit?”

  Harmodius looked troubled. “I am my own…” He paused. “There is so much to say, and no easy answers. We have come this night to make an alliance. But that alliance must be based on hard truths. And when the truths are said, there will be no unsaying them.”

  Desiderata put her hand to her throat—as she had never used to do—and her eyes dropped. “I, too, have learned some hard truths already,” she said.

  The Faery Knight and the Red Knight looked each other over like two boys sizing each other up for a match on the town green. Blanche watched them, fascinated by their similarities which easily overwhelmed their differences—despite
the Faery Knight’s slanted eyes, bright gold hair, and long teeth, despite the captain’s black hair and more commonplace eyes, there was something about them that shouted “kin.”

  Ser Gabriel bowed to the company. “Your grace, my lords, I propose we sit and talk. Let’s have it done. Together, I believe we can win this war—and perhaps put war to bed for a long, long time.”

  Harmodius sighed. “No, my boy. That’s not what will happen now.” He met the Red Knight’s eyes. “But it is a fine dream, and you should cling to it.”

  Ser Gabriel winced. “Then—I think I speak for all—tell us.” He looked at the great warden, as big as a war horse. “A heavier bench,” he said to Toby.

  The Queen motioned to Lady Briar. “Bring my son, if you would,” she said.

  “First, my companions,” Harmodius said. “The Faery Knight—lord of N’gara in the west. Mogon, Duchess of the North—one of the great Powers of the Wild, and our firmest ally. Nita Qwan, a sachem of the Sossag peoples. Krevak, Lord of the Many Waters, is my peer in the ars magika.”

  “You are too kind,” the last named irk said in flawless Archaic.

  “Flint, of the Long Dam Clan. Accounted among the Wild peoples as the elder and wisest of us. Then—” Harmodius frowned. “Exrech, Birthlord of the Fourth Hive of the Great River.”

  There were gasps as men recognized the knight in white armour as a great boglin, a wight.

  The Queen rose. “This is my captain—the Red Knight, Gabriel Muriens.” At the name Muriens, Mogon snarled and Krevak smiled and showed his teeth.

  “Lord Gregario of Wayland and Prior Wishart of the Order of Saint Thomas.”

  If the name Muriens had a poor effect, the name of the Order of Saint Thomas made the bears growl and the white thing twitch.

  “We can all be enemies very, very easily.” Harmodius looked around. “But then, only our true enemies will celebrate.”

  Mogon, the great warden, made a snuffling sound. “So you keep saying,” she intoned. Blanche thought her voice was beautiful.

  But it was one of the monstrous bears who stepped forward. “Man is not on trial here,” he said. “Our wrongs at the hands of man are not what we come to address. Let it only be said by the Matron that there will be justice when the fighting is done, and we will have good hearts.”