Dream Guy

by Clarke, A. Z. A;

  “I don’t know that I have done so very much. I almost wish we might change places so that I might meet this enemy of yours and examine your world as you have had the opportunity to examine mine.”

  Joe shook his head. “I don’t think you’d enjoy meeting him. But if I can find a way to show you my world, I will. Be ready, just in case.”

  “I will.”

  They shook hands, then Karabashi left with a sweep of his robes and a final wave of farewell. As Joe watched his silhouette recede into the cool of the palace corridors, fear gnawed at him, but he suppressed the urge to call the man back. It would only mean delay. Joe wanted action.

  * * * *

  When he woke, still in Eidolon’s dream, it was still dark, but there was a change in the quality of the light, and Joe rose from his bed. Shivering, he went to the window. It opened into the room, but then he had to unbolt the shutter and push it out. There had been snow overnight, and the gray half-light of those winter minutes before sunrise allowed Joe to see where he was.

  His window was three stories up in a red-brick house with gables and wings. He was in the southernmost of three wings, each with great mullioned windows. To the east lay rolling acres of field, to the south, woodland, black and jagged against the pristine sheet of snow that covered the land and trees. To the north were hills, and there Joe could see still more snow clouds gathering. He could see no hamlets or villages before him. Even if he could get out of his room and the house undetected, there would be little chance of a full escape. There must be horses somewhere in the establishment, presumably in stables somewhere near the house, although not visible from Joe’s window. But since Joe had never sat on a horse, he imagined that finding the stables would be a futile exercise.

  Although given that he had been able to read Arabic, there was no reason to suppose he couldn’t ride a horse or engage in swordplay.

  Joe went to the table by his bed and saw the candle with a tinder box beside it. He spent anxious moments trying to raise a spark sufficient to light a spill, but eventually he managed it.

  With the spill, he lit the candle and thoroughly explored his room. There was a massive dresser. He opened it. It had drawers and each held clothes. There were smallclothes, shirts, doublets, sleeves, ruffs, buskins, cloaks and caps in velvet and damask and taffeta, silk and woolen stockings, muslin cloths and heavily embroidered garters, handkerchiefs and kidskin gloves. There were ostrich feathers and swans down trimmings, ermines, ocelot, sable and ribbons and laces of mulberry and raspberry and crimson and navy. Everything was so carefully folded that Joe did not dare disturb the exquisite array.

  He closed the drawers and the great doors before investigating the huge chest at the foot of the bed. There, he found some things he thought might be useful. Leather belts with loops for scabbards and two slender velvet cases, each over a meter long. He took out the dark green velvet case first and flicked up the catches. Inside was a simple rapier with a sweeping hilt designed to protect the sword hand. Joe held it up in the classic fencer’s pose he remembered from films. He flexed his wrist, pointing the sword up, down, then drawing circles in the air with it. He moved forward a few paces then back. He lunged forward, and it was as if the sword led him, for he began to parry, feint and strike out as if he were confronting a real opponent. He stopped. He glanced around the room then once more imagined he had a real opponent before him and fought, pressing his enemy hard with a flurry of passes that should have left his arm aching, but it did not hurt at all, just as if he practiced daily.

  He replaced the first sword in its case and removed the second one. It was far fancier than the first, with jewels in the hilt and in the ricasso, below the hilt and above the sharpened section of the steel. It also had a matching dagger. He examined both, gazing at the jewels there, the rubies and diamonds winking in the dawn light. He was surprised by the lightness of the weapons until he thought about using them in a sustained fight. It would be no good having heavy weapons that would wear out your arm muscles more quickly.

  It seemed best to replace everything where he had found it. He hoped that it would not cross Eidolon’s mind to arrange a duel. However competent he seemed to be with a weapon here in the privacy of his room, he was not at all sure that he would keep his nerve when faced with a challenger of true ability. The fact that he could fence at all was also a useful secret against Eidolon.

  Joe measured the length and breadth of his room as he turned over and over in his mind any possible means of escaping Eidolon, overcoming and finishing him off. There had to be some simple way of eluding the man, but the solutions to his problems evaded him. Stray sounds from the house distracted Joe—the call of servants, a cockerel, a distant crash and raised voices as someone broke something and received a scolding.

  The key turned in the lock and the silent valet entered, carrying a tray with a bowl of some steaming mess and a tankard. He plonked it on the bed and said, “Eat this quickly. The master wishes to see you as soon as you are dressed.”

  Joe sat on the bed and picked up the bowl, smelling its contents. It reminded him of one of Mum’s soups.

  “It’s just pottage,” said the valet. As Joe continued to gaze dubiously into the bowl, the man sighed. “It’s what we servants have for breakfast. Vegetables, mainly from last night’s table all cooked up in a broth and mashed a bit so it has a bit of substance. You’ll need the strength.”

  He dipped his spoon into the indeterminate hot sludge. He lifted it to his lips, aware that he had not eaten the banquet the night before, nor while visiting Karabashi. He had not wanted to eat Eidolon’s food the night before, but he was too hungry to stop himself now. Hoping that it wasn’t drugged, Joe ate. It tasted bland, with a hint of seasoning as if someone might once have passed a stick of cinnamon over the cooking pot then thought better of it. After a few mouthfuls, he took a swig from the tankard and nearly spat it out again. “What is this?”

  “Small beer. Why?”

  “I don’t suppose— No, you’ve probably never heard of tea.”

  “Tea? What is tea?”

  “A drink that will catch on in another fifty years’ time, I should think. It comes from the orient. It comes from a plant, and you brew it with boiling water then you add sugar and milk. It’s delicious.” Joe took another swig of his small beer. It tasted much sweeter than normal beer, but serving it at room temperature did the flavor no favors. He was about to ask for water, then thought it would probably be germy beyond belief.

  The valet ignored Joe, focusing instead on the delicate issue of what clothes this guest should wear. He opened the great clothes press and fiddled and hummed as he chose this, rejected that, hemmed and hawed over the other and finally assembled a complete ensemble.

  Joe was to be dolled up in a sleek blue velvet outfit, liberally embroidered with silver thread. There was no ruff, but his shirt collar was stiff with seed pearls and his silk stockings were white. The fellow had chosen a pair of blue leather shoes with white rosettes. Joe was relieved that there was no mirror in the room. It was embarrassing enough having to wear this get-up without having to see his reflection. Nell would be smiling in derision. That was for sure.

  There was no clock in the room, so Joe asked the time. The valet thought it was between seven and eight, but time here was not so precise as Joe was used to. He hoped that the dream was speeding on much faster than real life and that back home, it was still deep night.

  Once he had been laced into his clothes, the valet stood back and examined Joe carefully. “You’d look better with a decent head of hair, but I suppose you’ll do well enough. At least a hat can hide the worst.” He had a sort of beret with a fringe at the ready that he tweaked into place.

  He went to the chest at the foot of the bed, pulled out one of the sword belts and strapped it around Joe. “I don’t suppose you know how to handle a sword, being more familiar with tea and so forth. But you must wear a sword now, for you’re nearly a man, and gentlemen do wear swords here.”<
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  Joe shrugged. The valet took the plain sword out of its case and handed it to him. Joe made a great show of struggling to get it into position, appearing to find the thing unwieldy and almost impossible to manage. The valet raised an eyebrow.

  “You’ll have to manage better than that, or we’ll have no fun at all this afternoon.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The master has set up a challenge for you against another guest, an expert swordsman from Padua, I hear. Out for blood, he is. Well, there’s a line of gentlemen waiting to fight him, so I daresay we’ll get some sport out of it, even if you aren’t up to providing it.”

  Joe finally managed to get the sword to cooperate, and he was ready. The valet held the door open for him and led him back through the labyrinth of staircases, passageways and turnings until they were on the ground floor once again. They stopped before a set of double doors, which the valet threw open. The room was packed with a glittering array of gentlemen, at the center of whom—like the pupil of an eye in dense black and dazzling diamonds—stood Eidolon.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Escape

  The pack of men turned to stare at Joe as he stood on the threshold of the room. It was paneled in oak wainscoting, with an oak floor on which the heels of the men clicked as they shifted. When they saw that he was a mere boy, they turned their backs on him and continued their conversations, Eidolon included. Joe edged through the doors just before the valet shut them.

  Once he was confident that no one was watching him, Joe made his way to the windows. He oriented himself. The chamber was a mirror image of the great dining hall, with the same number of huge windows. Both looked out onto a terrace, which gave onto a parterre of low box hedges and turf. He must be on the other side of the house from the bedroom where he had spent the night, facing west or southwest. A brick wall surrounded the formal garden and beyond that was parkland with several great oaks and horse chestnuts, their silhouettes bare and black against the pewter sky.

  He continued around the hall, listening to scraps of chatter about people he did not know and about foreign affairs he did not understand. The men were mostly talking about Spanish gains in northern France and how the French king would go about recovering Calais. They made ribald comments about the king’s romantic entanglements, laid wagers on the sex of the child his mistress was carrying and whether the old queen would agree to send any further troops to France to help him in his wars against the Spaniards. The men were clearly waiting for something, although Joe was not sure what. He looked for somewhere to sit. There were no chairs, but there was a great table, covered by a carpet which Joe recognized as a Turkish carpet, like those he had seen in Stamboul with Karabashi. On it stood a blue-and-white bowl, over half a meter in diameter. The sight of it made the back of his neck tingle and his breath quicken. He was sure that it was the bowl that Karabashi and his colleagues had been discussing the night he’d first met the scholar.

  “Do you like it? A particularly fine piece by the great Chinese master Wu Xianyang.” Eidolon had appeared at Joe’s side. “A gift from a dear friend.”

  “It’s very impressive.” Joe decided against making any rude comments about Iznik potters or the fact that there was no way of knowing who had made it since the marks on Ming pottery did not normally specify the name of any craftsmen. It had taken Joe a quick search on the Internet to discover that, but perhaps Eidolon was a bit of a technophobe. But the name was the same that the Ottoman scholars had mentioned, and Joe hoped that Karabashi was safe.

  “Feast your eyes while you can. We’re about to go hunting.”

  It amazed Joe that these gentlemen in their silks and velvets were contemplating a hunt, but they began filtering out of the room. As they entered the hall, their menservants awaited them, ready to help them remove their fine doublets and put on longer, heavier coats or tunics trimmed and lined with fur. Then they helped them tug on boots and buckle on enormous swords, daggers and spurs.

  Joe lingered. His valet was ready too. He slipped off Joe’s fancy shoes, eased on the soft leather boots, fiddled with the spurs, removed Joe’s sword then strapped on a heavier, longer scabbard and garniture. Finally, he added a hunting horn made with silver mouthpiece and rim. He followed the crowd of gentlemen who had filed down the great stairs to the carriageway. To the left of the stairs, a little way off, men were struggling to control a writhing mass of dogs, yelping and moaning in anticipation of their morning’s sport. Their pelts gleamed under the winter sun, some smooth and polished as pebbles on a beach, others shaggy and brindled. There were several different breeds as far as Joe could tell—a few slack-jowled, flop-eared beasts similar to bloodhounds, several pairs of more ferocious-looking creatures with big square jaws, neat little ears like devil’s horns and the build of Great Danes and perhaps eighteen or twenty greyhounds.

  There were also three pairs of mastiffs with huge chests and heads, wearing spiked collars laden with jewels and iron chains for leashes.

  Then there were the horses—restless, bearing gold-embossed saddles with barding and reins in scarlet or green with gold studs, their breath steaming in the cold morning air. Each horse was controlled by a groom, with another servant standing by holding spears and gauntlets. Joe lagged behind, waiting to see which horse would be his. It was a bay, looking enormous, but with less elaborate harnessing than some of the other horses around him. He went to the left side of the animal then placed his foot in the stirrup. It was a straightforward matter to hoist himself into position. He took the reins in his left hand and the horse whickered but did not move. It seemed quite natural. Then someone blew his horn, and the huntsmen mounted and most of the lighter dogs were lifted onto horses so that they would not be worn out when it came to loosing them at the prey. At last the cavalcade set off at a tidy trot toward the forest east of the house.

  They rode for about half an hour, deep into the forest made up of oak, birch, beech and sycamore, mostly mature, their branches bare, some twined with ivy, others distinguishable by their bark and shape. Quite soon the scent of log-fires rising from the brick chimneys of the great house had faded and the only sound was the jingle and clink of the horses’ saddlery, the soft thump of their hooves on the mulchy paths into the wood and occasional murmurs from the dogs. They were following huntsmen to the last known bed of the beast they were hunting. Joe had still not been able to discover exactly what animal that might be, but from the scraps of conversation that he managed to overhear, he had discovered that the animal was mature and cunning.

  So far, the horse was behaving itself too, and Joe had worked out that a simple twitch of the reins would indicate to the animal where it should go. At first, it had seemed content to lag behind the main body of riders, but as Joe’s confidence grew, he began to outpace some of the other riders and gradually he drew nearer to Eidolon, who was surrounded by five other gentlemen. One was elderly, with a white beard tidily squared off about three inches below his chin. Two others were middle-aged, their eyes creased and their faces beginning to blur about the jaw line, their beards streaked with gray.

  Another man was in his prime, with dancing blue eyes, a dark beard and a mischievous, curling mouth. He was doing much of the talking, making the others laugh and smirk. The youngest member of the party was a fellow in his late teens or early twenties, with light, unamused eyes and blond hair waving from beneath his dark hat, adorned with a single white feather. His hunting coat was trimmed with white fur and his saddle was the most elaborate and luxurious of all. He rode a chestnut horse, a little larger than the other men’s mounts, and he looked weary and somewhat irritated by his companions.

  Eidolon largely ignored the older men, accompanying this young man most closely and pointing out to him various sights that he apparently thought might be of interest, but the fellow scarcely acknowledged his host at all. Joe found him haughty and hoped he would not attract the interest of the only other person in the group of a similar age.

  By now th
e huntsmen had tracked down their quarry and the horn sounded, accompanied with great cries of, “Ho moy, ho moy.” A relay of the bigger dogs was released and the men spurred their horses forward. Joe’s horse raised its head and harrumphed before picking up speed, its gait shifting from a steady trot to a canter then into a full-fledged gallop. Joe’s body took over once again from his mind, steadying itself with the stirrups and sitting lower in the saddle, swaying as the horse’s legs began steadily pumping as the animal swerved and veered across the uneven forest floor.

  It was so hard to keep his seat that Joe did not notice that his horse had outpaced the other riders. It came to a sudden halt almost on top of six of the fiercest dogs, all poised in a clearing around a black, hairy creature making a frenzied, squealing noise, its small eyes red, its mouth wide and saliva dripping from its livid mouth. The boar feinted first to its right then to its left, but was kept at bay by the snarling dogs.

  Joe adjusted his hold on his spear. It had been positioned into a slot at his stirrup, but now he knew he would need it. The dogs would not be able to hold the creature for long, and he sensed that as the largest target, he was the most likely object of its imminent attack. He leveled the spear, working out the best angle. His horse seemed blessedly calm, and he wondered if it would stay that way while he struggled with the boar. He hoped that other hunters were not far behind. He had no idea which section of the boar’s anatomy he should aim at, but he knew it needed to be low and dense, otherwise the boar would twist away from the spear and if he were to succeed in merely wounding it, it would become even more dangerous. It was making noisy panting sounds now, its feet churning up the earth beneath it as it readied itself to charge. Joe held his horse steady, then it came at them. As the boar hurtled forward, the hounds leaped and twisted out of its way and onto its back, one burying its teeth into the nape of the beast’s neck, one savaging its spine, a third grasping a thick hindquarter while a fourth slid beneath its feet and whined as the fearsome tusks tore at its flesh. Joe closed his eyes as he plunged the spear into the side of the animal, and the force jarred up his whole arm, but he held steady and urged his horse forward. He did not know which was stronger, the boar or the horse, but he knew that if the horse gave way, it would lose its balance, leaving both of them vulnerable to a goring. He would not let that happen, and he grappled with the boar on the end of the spear as it wrenched and writhed under the onslaught of dogs and iron. Blood pounded in his ears, but over the harsh breath of beasts, he could hear the halloos and cries and horns of the other hunters.