The Dragon, the Earl, and

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "But, there's this business of making him look like a horse and act like a horse—" Jim was beginning again.

  "Oh," said Carolinus. "But that's no problem. I'll just have a little talk with that boar. After that, I think he'll do more or less what you want him to do; that is, as far as a boar can act like a horse. There are physical limitations, you know."

  Aargh snorted. Just what the snort was supposed to indicate, Jim was not sure. But he was sure it would not be the wisest idea to ask what the wolf had meant.

  "Then there's the matter of the troll, Mnrogar," said Carolinus, almost dreamily. "I can have a small talk with him, too. It won't make him into a knight, you understand, but like the boar, he'll be more amenable to suggestion. Aargh, you say you know where this boar is now?"

  "I know where to look for him," said Aargh.

  "Excellent!" said Carolinus. "We'll both go look now, then."

  Carolinus and Aargh disappeared. Brian looked rather blank. At the same time, Jim became aware that the portion of 22IB Baker Street that had seemed to contain Carolinus and him had vanished. He was completely in Mnrogar's den with Brian. Carolinus, having now made up his mind, was evidently spending magical energy with a vengeance.

  Chapter 28

  As Jim sat at the high table, with the cressets flaring to light the Great Hall—and the air already stuffy and overheated, in spite of every arrow slit and window having their shutters thrown wide open—a slim female figure in a worn old brown cloak, with its hood completely over the head and held tight closed to hide the face within, glided into the empty seat beside him.

  "It's me," said Angie, letting the hood fall open enough to show her face. "You're sober! Good. I got worried; and I didn't want to send either Enna or the wet nurse down to see if their Lord was passed out drunk, so I took this robe of Enna's and came down myself."

  She untied the cord around the waist of the cloak and threw the garment off her, showing herself in a green gown more suitable to her status as one of the honored guests here in the hall, merely sitting and talking to her husband.

  "I was worried," she said.

  "And well you might be," said Jim.

  And well she might be. The dinners had run later steadily as the Twelve Days of Christmas passed, the wine become less watered, the behavior more licentious. It was somewhere between nine and ten o'clock at night—the equivalent of three or four in the morning by twentieth-century standards. Those still left in the hall—as it happened, a majority of the guests, simply because the Earl himself was also still here—were down to a hard core of those who enjoyed unlimited partying. They had, effectively, been at dinner since between one and two o'clock in the afternoon. The decorum had long since passed from the normal to the uproarious, and by now had added a certain amount of downright dangerousness.

  "You are sober, aren't you?" asked Angie. "You're not just sitting there stupefied, but acting bright-eyed and normal, are you?"

  "No," said Jim. "This time I outfoxed them. I've been managing to drink mainly water, with just enough wine to color it. Now we've reached the point where as long as I go through the motions of drinking, that's all anybody expects—oops, here comes one now."

  A plainly very drunk middle-aged knight dressed all in brown, his cote-hardie straining over his portly figure, was lurching up to the opposite side of the high table. He reached it, a large square mazer in his hand with red wine slopping in it.

  "A cup with you, Sir Dragon!" he said thickly, waving the mazer and slopping his wine about. "Dragons forever!"

  Jim lifted his own mazer to his lips and drank and then lifted it again.

  "Sir Randall forever!" he said.

  "Y'honor me," said the knight, and lurched away again.

  "Wouldn't it have been better to toast his family name? Or is Sir Randall the first name of someone else?"

  "No, it's his," said Jim. "I can't remember most of their last names. If I can't remember either one, I offer a toast to some part of the coat of arms that they're all wearing somewhere about them. In an emergency, I mumble. Don't look at me that way, Angie; I'm just trying to last until the Earl leaves or passes out; and I think he's close to passing out now."

  "I hope you're right," said Angie. "I really don't think it's safe for you to be here with all of them in this condition."

  "Probably not," said Jim.

  He looked out over the hall. Perhaps a third of those there were either unconscious from the amount they had drunk or so close to being unconscious that they could hardly stir from their seats. But there was a sufficient core of people like Sir Randall who were still on their feet and moving about, or able to go through the motions of being their usual selves; and within these was the truly dangerous core.

  These were the male guests who had been careful not to get drunk beyond a safe point; and now sat around, stiff-backed, upright and smiling with glittering invitation on all and sundry who might approach them.

  The smile, particularly on the faces of such as Brian and Sir Harimore, was something like the smile on the face of the tiger, on whom the Lady from Niger mistakenly went on for a ride.

  "I am too much of a gentleman to start a fight," that smile said, "but if you would care to offend me, I would be happy to satisfy any desire you might have for a small encounter."

  "You know, Angie," Jim said thoughtfully, "remember how our spring breaks used to be at the college back at Riveroak? We had ten days; and the first day or so, it seemed that we had time unlimited; and those same first few days had so many things going on in them that it seemed we could live half a lifetime before we had to go back into academic life again? And then, all of a sudden, we'd wake up to the fact that there were only two or three days left of the break, and it was all going to be over in no time at all? You remember?"

  "I remember," said Angie. "I also remember that, looking back on it, the latter days of the break were just as filled with things to do as the first ones, only by that time we weren't paying any attention to time at all, and acting as if we were going to have a lifetime that way. Then we came down with a bump on the last day. You know—"

  She broke off to glance around the hall. Everybody there was immersed in their own conversation scene or argument.

  "—You know," she said again, "come to think of it, this is the best chance I've really had to talk privately with you for days. Our rooms aren't the best place, with Enna or the wet nurse in the next room with little Robert; and every place else we're with people. I don't believe anyone in this time even knows what privacy means."

  "It's uncommon enough," said Jim, looking around the hall and silently agreeing with her view on medieval privacy.

  "Well, it's a chance for me to say something to you," said Angie. "Do you know Agatha Falon's been bribing everybody's servants right and left to keep an eye on our room—'because of course she'd like to visit little Robert when it was possible, but she didn't want to disturb us more than was necessary. I was such a good keeper of the little boy'?"

  "At least she admits it," said Jim, trying to think of a way to lift the anxiety that was clearly on Angie's mind.

  "You aren't very perceptive, Jim," said Angie dryly. "That's an ultimate fourteenth-century put-down. What she's doing is talking about me as if I was on the servant level, with Enna and the wet nurse. The message is that I'm actually no Lady. That's about as insulting as you can get in this society; particularly talking about another woman who outranks you."

  "Oh, well," said Jim uncomfortably. "I don't imagine she can do anything, so she's taking it out in insults. She's been here at table with the Earl since the dinner started."

  "She's here now?" said Angie, trying to peer past Jim, two empty seats and the bulky body of the Earl, without appearing to do so.

  "That's right," said Jim.

  "I came in from the side entrance," said Angie, giving up the effort. "I didn't think to see her still at table. Is she drunk?"

  "Not that you could tell," answered Jim. "From what I can s
ee, she can really hold her wine—better than the Earl, for all his body weight."

  "The Earl's in for a surprise from her, one of these days," said Angie darkly. "Anyway, the point is, Jim, there's only a few days left for us all to be together here; and I'm sure she'll try something against us or little Robert. I want another man-at-arms actually inside our first room, except when you or Brian, or someone like that's there. And he's not to talk to the wet nurse or Enna, or they to him. We can have that, can't we?"

  "Another man, armed?" Jim asked.

  Angie nodded.

  "Theoretically, I suppose it's going beyond the permission the Earl gave us out of courtesy to have an armed man at the door," he said. "But I don't think, this late in the twelve-day period, it'll matter. What have we got? There's just tomorrow and the next day, isn't there?"

  "Don't tell me you've forgotten?" asked Angie.

  "I haven't forgotten," said Jim. "I remember what day it is, in spite of what I said earlier. But I've been pretty busy, you know, with Mnrogar and that boar. Brian has been doing his best, but it's going to be a miracle if both the boar and Mnrogar act like they ought to at the tournament. Also, we've got another problem. Mnrogar doesn't dare say anything and probably wouldn't say it right anyway if he did. What he needs is a page or herald to go ahead of him and announce that he's there to challenge everybody."

  Jim cleared his throat.

  "—I don't suppose, if you put on hose and a doublet—"

  "Don't be insane, Jim!" said Angie. "I'm a married Lady. Maybe at the court in London, under special conditions with the King approving it, something like that might be done. But here, everybody in the county would start pretending they couldn't see us, after something like that. Would Brian put on a clown suit and start doing somersaults on the floor to make people laugh?"

  "No," said Jim, stunned by an image of Brian in a clown suit doing any such thing, "but he's a knight."

  "And I'm a knight's Lady. A Baroness," said Angie. "Nice Ladies have a lot less freedom to do things than nice knights; and anything that isn't done really isn't done! You should know that by now, Jim."

  "Probably no one would ever find out it was you, dressed up like a page," said Jim.

  "And possibly just one person would," said Angie grimly. "Then all the world would hear. No."

  "Well, possibly you're right," said Jim.

  "Of course I am," said Angie. "And, speaking of people dressing up and doing things: have you forgotten you're going to be Joseph in my Creche scene the last evening here? I've been trying to set up some kind of rehearsal, but I can never catch you."

  "Angie," said Jim, "I simply can't do it. I've got the Mnrogar tournament thing earlier that day. The problem of handling the dragons is still up in the air. I've got to think of some way to get them here briefly, even if they don't see anybody but the Prince for a moment or two before having to leave again. Then there's still that whole mob of trolls circling out beyond the edge of Mnrogar's territory and the rest of us here; and nobody knows what they're likely to do. I've got to be free to move around that day. I can't be tied down to being with you when that scene goes on."

  "If you don't," said Angie, "there won't be any scene. I've got to have a Joseph."

  "I told you," said Jim, "I can magically get someone here from Malencontri. We can put a costume on him and I can magic him to go through the motions and say whatever words you want to say."

  "Have you ever had anything to do with amateur theatricals?" Angie asked.

  "You know I haven't," said Jim.

  "Well, you know I have," said Angie. "And the chances that things will go wrong are just about ninety-nine to one. Whoever's Joseph may have to ad-lib, to handle whatever suddenly happens to change the performance when it actually goes on. Your magic man from Malencontri won't be able to do anything but parrot the speech he's been given ahead of time. You're the only one who can do the ad-libbing."

  "Well, I'll say what I did earlier," said Jim. "I'll do my best to be there when the time comes; but you'd better have somebody else ready to step out and stand there anyway. Maybe I can come up with some magic that will let you do your lines and his, too, if something goes wrong."

  "Jim, does my voice sound like a baritone to you?"

  "I can make your voice for Joseph sound like a baritone," said Jim. "But—let me forget about it for now, anyway. There's too much else to deal with."

  "That's all right. You'll come up with solutions for these other things," said Angie. "I trust you. And when you start to get in control of them, then we'll talk again about your being Joseph. Forget it for now. What exactly is your biggest problem with Mnrogar and the boar?"

  "Simply the fact that Mnrogar's a troll and the boar's a boar," said Jim.

  "You mean they want to fight each other?" Angie asked.

  "Not that. In the sense that the two of them never want to do the same thing at the same time," said Jim, "I suppose you could say they're fighting each other; but they're not doing it deliberately. Carolinus took care of that by whatever magic he used when he had his little talks with them—whatever he did or said then. They came in like lambs. The boar turned into a good-looking horse; Mnrogar turned into a huge but believable black knight in armor, riding the boar. But it's from that point on things've become difficult. The boar may look like a horse; but he's a horse that wants to act like a boar; and Mnrogar may look like a knight in armor, but he wants to act like a troll. Carolinus was right. There're certain basic problems—"

  "Oh, wait a minute!" said Angie. "I forgot Hob-One is upstairs wanting to talk to you, and he did say he was in a hurry. Secoh is evidently waiting for him to come back with some message from you. Hob's in the chimney of the fireplace of the first of our two rooms, out of sight of course, of Enna and the wet nurse."

  "They won't hurt him," said Jim.

  "Tell him that," said Angie. "He only trusts me because I'm connected to you. Anyway, the point is he wanted to talk to you right away; and that was what decided me finally to come down here and check on you—though I'd been thinking about it earlier."

  "It's ridiculous!" said Jim. "That hobgoblin carries caution too far. Anyway, he'll just have to wait. I made up my mind not to leave here until the Earl did; and he can't last much longer, but—"

  He broke off suddenly.

  "Oh, no!" he said.

  "Oh, no what?" said Angie, turning to look out through the hall in the direction that Jim's eyes had suddenly been directed. "What is it? I don't see anything going on that hasn't been going on anyway. Brian's just sitting down there now, talking quietly to another man who seems as sober as he is."

  "That's what worries me," said Jim. "That other man is Sir Harimore—you remember him?"

  "Oh," said Angie, "you mean the other knight who offered to escort me back from that hawking on one of the first few mornings and actually did ride along with Brian to escort Geronde and me back to the castle? What's wrong with their talking?"

  "As long as they do nothing but talk, nothing," said Jim. "But they don't like each other; and I think they both got a little tired waiting for somebody else to come pick an argument with them; so Sir Harimore seems to have gone over to Brian, and that could very well end in the two of them slipping out together for a quiet little sword fight—by mutual consent."

  "But why would they want to do that?" said Angie. "I thought they were looking forward to meeting each other in the tournament the last day of the party."

  "Well they were and probably are," said Jim, "but there's more going on there than appears on the surface. You know how Brian depends on winning tournaments to get prizes he can sell or pawn for the extra money he needs to keep Castle Smythe going? Well, Sir Harimore is well enough off so he doesn't have to worry about income, but he knows Brian lives on the edge of poverty all the time. As it stands, they've each won two of the four tournaments in which they've ridden against each other; and one of them is almost a sure bet to win the prize this time."

  "It'd be
tter be Brian," said Angie. "He's going to need a lot of money before long, Geronde tells me—she won't say what for."

  "He always needs a lot of money," said Jim. "Anyway, Sir Harimore knows that; Harimore himself is one of these people who's always determined to be better than anyone else—do you remember when there was the invasion of the sea serpents and Sir John Chandos was with us in the castle and all of a sudden what seemed to be a fight broke out in the courtyard?"

  "Yes," said Angie.

  "Well, you remember it turned out that they had just been play-fighting?" Jim went on, "With Brian heading up a bunch that was trying to beat their way in through the door of the Great Hall; and Sir John was head of another group that was trying to keep them out?"

  "I remember," said Angie. "Yes. What's that got to do with it?"

  "Well you remember I stopped it simply by appearing; and both Brian and John Chandos apologized to me—since I was their host. But in the process of apologizing, Chandos highly complimented Brian, including him in a reference to the best swords in the kingdom."

  "That's right," said Angie. "I remember now. He did. Brian was thrilled. I was thrilled for him, too—and of course Geronde—"

  "Well that's it," said Jim. "The word spread, of course, and reached Sir Harimore; and he can't stand the idea that people might think that meant Brian was a better fighter than he was. So he's ready to do almost anything he can to chop Brian down. That's why I'm afraid what looks like them talking quietly together is working up to an agreement to slip out and settle things with swords right now. They've got just enough wine in them to not have ordinary prudence."

  "Surely," said Angie, "they wouldn't kill each other? Not while they're guests here in the castle, would they? I know an awful lot goes on here; but the guests won't actually try to kill each other, will they?"

  "No," said Jim, "of course not. That'd be a violation of the Earl's hospitality, to say the least; and simply not done in any case, but what I'm afraid of is Harimore has been planning this, maybe only pretending to drink all evening, so he could catch Brian half-drunk and wound him—not badly enough to keep him out of the tournament, but enough to handicap Brian as far as being at his top effectiveness, when they ride against each other in just two days from now."