The Dragon, the Earl, and

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "Oh," said Secoh.

  "Yes," said Jim, "you go back and tell the Cliffside dragons that I'll do my best to get you all involved with Christmastide if I can. There's a small chance I can't make it, but I'm going to try very hard—and I believe all of you know that when I try very hard I usually manage to do things."

  "Oh yes!" said Secoh. "We never worry, if we know you're trying to do something; because you always do it."

  "Well, I suppose…" said Jim, feeling guilty.

  He cast a glance over his shoulder to reassure himself Hob was still sitting there on his waft of smoke.

  "Now," he said, "I'd better have Hob-One get me back to the Earl's castle, as soon as possible; so I can get to work on this."

  "Thank you, my Lord!" said Secoh. "I don't know how to thank you. None of the Cliffside dragons will know how to thank you. We'll do our best, of course."

  "That's good of you," said Jim, feeling even more guilty. "Well, goodbye then, for the moment; and I'll hope to see you in the near future."

  "You will!" said Secoh fervently.

  The trouble was, Jim was still thinking—as Hob-One brought him back down into his own quarters at the Earl's via the chimney route—it would not be just one or two Cliffside dragons that would want to come with Secoh to the Earl's, to be part of the legendary happening that Jim had no idea how to arrange in any case.

  If one wanted to come, all the Cliffside dragons would want to come. And if there was one knight among the guests in the castle who would slaver at the mouth at the thought of fighting a dragon, there was probably all of them. In short, if Jim succeeded in giving the dragons what they wanted, it was almost a sure recipe for an attack by the knights on the unsuspecting dragons; and a resultant free-for-all that would go down in history.

  It would probably push back any hope of a friendship growing up between humans and dragons for the next three hundred years.

  —But at this moment, Jim found himself suddenly standing on his feet in front of the fireplace in his outer room, and Angie just coming into that room from the inner room. She jumped and gave a small scream.

  "I wish you'd stop being startled when I come back magically like this," said Jim peevishly. "It's been several years now since I first started doing it—"

  "That's entirely beside the point!" said Angie angrily. "I can't be expecting you every minute, you know. And if I'm not expecting you, how can I not be startled when you show up?"

  The logic could not be argued with. But then, thought Jim, he never had any luck arguing with Angie anyway.

  "I suppose you're right," he said.

  "You bet I'm right!" said Angie. She had something of a wrought-up air about her, as if she might be ready to go off like a time bomb at any moment. But she made an effort, settled down and smiled at Jim.

  "But it's good to have you back," she said, going to him.

  They kissed each other.

  "Ah…" said Angie, opening her eyes and stepping back out of his arms. She pushed him down into a chair and sat down in one opposite. "Jim, you've got to do something about this Agatha woman!"

  "I? Me?" said Jim. "Why?"

  "She's been here twice now," said Angie. "I don't like it!"

  "Naturally, of course," said Jim. "I mean—why don't you like it?"

  "She came to see little Robert!" said Angie, speaking in a false, syrupy voice and clasping her hands in front of her. She half closed her eyes in an exaggerated expression of angelic meekness. "Because he was now her only living relative! Now that her poor brother was dead! As if I didn't know that he was only her half-brother and they hadn't hardly said a word to each other in the last ten years!"

  "How do you know that?" asked Jim curiously. "About them not talking in the last ten years?"

  "Oh, everybody knows it," said Angie. "That's not the point. The point is she doesn't fool me. It's not Robert she's interested in. It's his estate. She wants the wardship; and she's been making these excuses to drop by to see him, hoping to find something around here that she can use as an excuse to argue that she should have the wardship. Luckily, she hasn't found it."

  "Are you sure?" asked Jim.

  Angie put off the exaggerated expression, sat up straight and looked at him sharply.

  "Am I sure about what?" she asked.

  "Well, both things," said Jim. "That she's only interested in the wardship and that she was looking for some excuse around here that she could use to argue that you aren't taking good care of Robert, and so she should have the wardship."

  "Of course I'm sure," said Angie. "This isn't the twentieth century, Jim."

  "I know that," said Jim, nettled.

  "She knows nothing about the child—knew nothing about it until she heard that her brother was on his way here with a new wife and the baby. So how can she pretend to have any affection or love for Robert? Let alone the fact that she hasn't gotten an affectionate bone in her body. I tell you I know the woman. I read her at first glance. Even if I hadn't, it's an open secret. She's ambitious. She's been living all these years on an allowance from her brother. But ambition takes money—or rather, money helps a great deal in furthering an ambition like becoming Queen of England. There's lots of money in managing Robert's estate until he comes of age; and she'd have no conscience about plundering it. Because later on if she was successful, no one would dare call her to book for it; and even if she was unsuccessful, that's what most people do when they get awarded the wardship of an orphan like Robert."

  "You're undoubtedly right," said Jim. "How about my second point, though? I was wondering why you were so sure that she hadn't found any kind of an excuse around here that she might be able to use to get him."

  "Oh, that?" said Angie. "Of course, I was expecting her. I made sure that we were being a perfect model of good care for Robert, according to this century. I even had him reswaddled, poor little fellow. That was the only thing I was concerned about. She might easily have heard that I had unswaddled him and put him in a crib; and she might be able to make something out of that. But I can't bear to keep him swaddled up all the time, just on the chance she'll come by. But our man-at-arms on duty outside has orders to delay her with excuses if she shows up and say finally he has to step inside to get permission to bring her in. She won't like it, but she can't make any capital out of that."

  "I suppose not," said Jim.

  "Of course she can't," Angie went on. "It's just proof we're taking extra good care of Robert. Then I always apologize after she comes in; of course, she sees through the apologizing, but there's nothing she can do about it. Anyway, that way we get time enough to get Robert out of the crib, the crib hidden and him swaddled up again. Each time she's been here, she's seen him swaddled in traditional fashion."

  "Good!" said Jim heartily. "That should take care of her."

  "It has so far," said Angie. "But there's no telling what she might not come up with next. I spoke to Geronde, but she wasn't any help."

  "She wasn't?"

  "Well, you know Geronde," said Angie. "Or you ought to by this time. She's my best friend here; but the way she thinks sometimes makes my hair curl. Her best suggestion was that we hire some outlaw types, or men like them—men who wouldn't be missed and are willing to do anything—and have them waylay Agatha's party when she leaves the castle. She's got twenty men-at-arms with her, so it won't be a simple thing to kill everybody in her party—but Geronde pointed out that they didn't need to. The attack just had to be an excuse for making sure Agatha herself was killed. Then Geronde came up with the way to tie all the ends up neatly. We'd arrange to have a force hidden in the woods to catch the men who did it. Then kill them, so they couldn't be made to tell anyone what they were hired to do. It'd look like you just came to the rescue again, a little too late, just like you did with the brother."

  "I couldn't do that!" said Jim.

  "Of course not," said Angie. "But that's Geronde. So, it's up to you. Jim, surely with magic and everything at your fingertips, you can come up
with some way to block Agatha off from any hope of getting the wardship of young Robert; and once she realizes she's got no hope, she won't bother with him any more and he'll be safe."

  Jim smiled inwardly. As usual, he was being given an impossible task; this time by Angie, when it was usually Carolinus or outside events that pushed him into something. But this time, he had an ace up his sleeve. Angie would be surprised.

  "Oh, I think we probably won't need to worry about it," he said. "The whole matter's going to pass out of our hands entirely. Angie, I've just finished arranging a way to have us be sent back by the assembled magicians of this world, to our own twentieth century. So we'll be there shortly after all. How do you like that?"

  Angie stared at him, her face going white. She kept on staring, to the point where Jim began to feel slightly uncomfortable. Finally, she found her voice.

  "But we couldn't possibly leave now," she said. "Probably not for another eighteen or twenty years or so!"

  Chapter 16

  "The medieval world he was in—and, for all he knew, the universe surrounding it—rocked around Jim.

  "Eighteen to twenty…" he said, dazed.

  "Well, maybe only eight—or six. We have to be sure you've got Robert's wardship and time enough to bring him up to an age where he's old enough to be turned over to people belonging to this time," said Angie. "Call it the foreseeable future. Of course, we could take him back with us to the twentieth century—"

  Jim was not at all sure that would be allowed. Possibly, it would be emphatically not. But Angie was going on.

  "—But no. Of course we can't go back to the twentieth century now," she said. "It's unthinkable!"

  "Unthinkable," echoed Jim dully.

  Angie got up from her chair and swooped down on him, sitting on his lap and throwing her arms around him.

  "Were you counting on going so much, Jim?" she asked, hugging him. "I didn't think it meant that much to you. I mean, I thought that you liked it here a lot and you were just thinking about going home for my sake."

  "Well, I was," mumbled Jim, too numb not to tell the truth.

  "That was wonderful of you," said Angie. "It's the sort of thing you always do; and I should have thought you'd be doing it now. But don't you see, we have to wait at least until we have the wardship; but even after we get it, it'll be a matter of seeing Robert started in life. It doesn't really seem to be fair to bring him up in the twentieth century as the child of two struggling academics when here he'd be rich."

  "I suppose you're right," said Jim uncomfortably.

  But Angie was going on.

  "—You know how many babies and young children die at this time in history," she said. "There're so many things that can keep them from ever living to grow up. And Robert's such a fragile little fellow. If you'd held him in your arms the way I have, you'd know that we couldn't just turn him loose in this cruel world. He'd be left to grow up or die, by himself. There're people like Agatha, who'd just as soon see him off the face of the earth; plus all the ordinary dangers, and all the childhood diseases—that you and I know more about than anyone does here—and the carelessness of the people around him. There's even neglect, by the servants supposed to take care of him; even maybe by his own nursemaid. Or, even if the nursemaid loves him, like the little girl we've got nursing him now—ignorance on her part could cause Robert not to live to grow up. Don't you see, Jim?"

  "Yes," said Jim. "I see."

  "Don't say it that way," coaxed Angie. "We'll enjoy it too, you know. It'll be a happy thing to have the little boy growing up with us this way for a few years. I mean—we can't abandon him; and if we don't abandon him, then we've got to stick with him until he has a chance to survive. Wouldn't you agree to that?"

  "I guess so," said Jim.

  Indeed, there was not much he could do but agree. In the first place, he knew that no matter how he might feel at the moment, he was going to end up doing what Angie wanted to do, simply because he wanted her to be happy. Secondly, while he had no great attachment to babies in general, and had had very little contact with the one in the next room, everything Angie said was true. As very young children went, Robert was rather an appealing little fellow. For one thing, it was surprising how seldom he cried, and how quickly he stopped when his immediate need was attended to.

  Also, everything Angie had said was true. Robert's situation was precarious, to use the most optimistic term. In any case, Jim could hardly agree to abandon him before the King had assigned his wardship to someone trustworthy.

  Jim thought of telling Angie that if they did stay here, he might be stripped of all his magic; and all of them, not merely Robert, would be in a more or less defenseless situation.

  For all he knew, he might even lose his ability to turn into a dragon—although that was something he should ask Carolinus about. It might be that turning into a dragon was something that he had in his own right. He had been one before he became an apprentice to Carolinus, so it might be that ability, anyway, would stay with him. It would be an asset, if so, but the only one they would have left.

  Then he thought better of mentioning it. Simply put, the fact now was that he had to come up with some way of stopping Son Won Phon, along with whoever among the magicians were agreeing with him. There had to be some answer to that, too. It was up to him to find it; and there was no point in worrying Angie when she could do nothing about it. Only he could; and since he had to do it all himself anyway, he might as well keep it to himself and not upset her with it.

  "You're right, Angie," he said. "We'll have to stay, at least for the moment. I don't see just how the future's going to work out beyond that, but maybe it'll come clearer later on. There're so many problems—"

  "Oh, darling," said Angie, squeezing him. "I knew you'd understand. Listen! You know I told you I'd think about your problem about the troll under the castle and the other troll he thinks is up here and the Earl and so forth?"

  "What?" said Jim. "Oh, that. That's right, you did."

  "Well I've thought of something!" Angie sat triumphantly upright on his knees. "Would you like to hear it?"

  "Of course!" said Jim, with all the enthusiasm he could muster.

  "You'll love it!" said Angie. Her eyes were actually sparkling, Jim noticed with some surprise. "You know that reenactment of the sea battle at Sluys between the Prince's father and the French navy? You didn't finish the dinner, so you didn't get to see it. But you remember they were going to have it?"

  "I remember," said Jim.

  "Well," said Angie, "it was the most skin-and-bones, gimcrack, exaggerated, underplayed and overplayed thing you ever saw. They put it on just in front of the high table, facing all of us who were sitting there, but with their backs to everyone else in the room. But that didn't seem to matter to the rest of the guests." She paused to draw a breath.

  "They brought boxes out—or something like them—for the actor playing King Edward to stand on. That was supposed to be the important high point of his ship, which was leading all the other English ships into battle. And they had things like stepladders or portable scaffolding they brought in, that were supposed to be other high parts of the ship—one of them even had a sort of basket around him that meant he was an English archer shooting with special broad-tipped arrows at the French ships to cut their rigging; and you had to pretend that somebody up on a ladder with his feet higher than Edward's head was really at a lower point on the ship than he was. Also, you had to pretend when the ships came together that they were boarding from one ship to another, but actually there was just empty floor and they started fighting across it as if they were boarding… and so on. It was actually hilarious. I had to fight to keep from laughing."

  Jim smiled in spite of the way he was feeling.

  "I can imagine," he said. "Staging and a lot of other things would be left to the audience's imagination. In fact, audiences at this time were supposed to use lots of imagination, watching a performance."

  "Well, they had it, a
nd to spare!" Angie jumped to her feet. "You should have seen the reaction of all the guests. Even though they were seeing the play pretty much from the wrong side—it wasn't completely from the wrong side, of course, because the actors had to move around and sometimes they had to face away from the high table, particularly when they were fighting. But everyone there just ate it up. I hadn't realized how much any entertainment, any kind of a spectacle, means to these people."

  "I don't think I had, either," said Jim thoughtfully. He was remembering all the additions the ballad makers had added to his own actions at the Loathly Tower, in making up their songs about it.

  "But you know how children are when you tell them a story?" said Angie. "They actually live the story. If you tell them about something frightening, they get really frightened. If you tell them about something that tastes good, you can see them actually tasting it in their mouths. If you tell them about a castle, the castle is right there, completely real as far as they're concerned. Well, the people at that dinner were just like that."

  "Were they?" Jim was getting interested in spite of himself.

  "Absolutely," said Angie. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it. But I swear that most of the men there could hardly hold themselves from rushing up and starting to fight with the actors. And the women were just as fascinated. More than that—you know all of us who were at the high table? The Earl, and the Bishop, Chandos, and everybody else? They were just as caught up in it as the people at the two long tables."

  "No wonder Brian didn't want to miss it," said Jim. "You know, I didn't realize what he might have been depriving himself of. I've been feeling kind of guilty about that whole matter of having him pretend to fall down; and what came about as a result—I really hadn't planned for him to have a vision—"

  "I know you hadn't," said Angie. "It was the Bishop who put the idea in his head and everybody else's. But the Earl, the Bishop, Chandos—everybody—were just as caught up in that make-believe battle as a bunch of kids!"