The Dragon and the Fair M

by Gordon R. Dickson

  "Forgive me," she said, "but my time is short. What I have come to tell you is that Edward and I must be leaving Malencontri early tomorrow morning—perhaps before you would be up. The four of us may never meet again in our lives, and so I must quickly to my reason for coming here. I was waiting to speak to you one last time. There is something you should know. I have already told Angela, but I wished to tell you myself what I have to say. It is a matter of great joy to Edward and myself, and we have you to thank for it. Can you guess what it is?"

  "No," said Jim, honestly.

  "Edward and his father are reconciled at last! Indeed, the reconciliation was more on the King's side than Edward's, though both had been at fault, and it took both to come to one mind together again. But we have you and Brian and Dafydd—all of you at Malencontri, our dearest friends—I may say that, may I not?—to say our thanks to you for it. But most of all to you, dear James, and most particularly for putting Edward in command of your force against the goblins, so that the victory redounds to his credit."

  "There was no other real choice," Jim said, somewhat awkwardly. "As a matter of rank—"

  "Let us not talk of that. You let him lead, which was what mattered—to him and the King. You did not send him out with a personal guard around him to protect him from the brunt of the battle. That, above all, was what made his father love him. Certes, Edward, at fifteen years of age, had proved himself against some of the best of the French. But Cumberland's lies had all but convinced the King that Edward had been guarded and led by Chandos and others, throughout the chevauche into France."

  "Oh, yes," said Jim.

  "But now!" Joan went on triumphantly, "Old Edward stood in your castle and saw his eldest son, his heir, the next King of England to be, leading as such a one should—leading and winning. This, added to the fact that you and Brian and Dafydd had accepted him as a friend and companion, which the King already had remarked—that Edward had also been accepted into the company of close friendship with two known paladins—put the seal on a very different image of his son, to his eternal happiness."

  "Well…" Jim looked looked a little desperately at Angie for some words to assist him. But she was still standing silent, leaving it to him. "I'm glad it all turned out as you say."

  "And so are we all!" said Joan happily. "So are both of us, Edward and I, and do not believe that he will ever forget what you have done for him. That is not his nature."

  "I still think you give me too much credit—" Jim was beginning clumsily, but Joan went right on, paying him no attention.

  "Mark my words!" she said. "I do not mean to tell you that all is now mended forever between father and son. Cumberland will not yield easily in his efforts and his ambitions, and King and son will unconsciously give him opportunities. Those two hotheads, both aware of what they are, and both always initially convinced they are right, will find reason to fall out again. But the King is not the wine-soaked fool that too many take him for. He puts up with Cumberland because Cumberland is so useful to him.

  "He is no longer the young man he was when I was a little girl at court with Edward," she said. "In those days, his father would never have allowed Cumberland so much liberty, now he lets the man win from him in small matters. But if that Earl should ever seem to oppose him in some dangerous way, he would crush him like a cockroach, without warning, under his foot."

  "Are you really sure of that?" Jim said, remembering how the King had needed to be assisted from the table, only a short time since.

  "I am more than sure. I am certain. Remember, I have known Old Edward from my childhood upward. I know him now. He has been a good King—good for England—and a word from him can bring all England to his banner. He has always played the great lords against each other, so that they might not unite dangerously among themselves. Oxford has not survived this long as almost Cumberland's equal by his own wits and power alone—though he may think he has. Never the King forgets he is King—and that Cumberland may only say and try to do what he wishes. No effort of his will ever erase from the King's memory the sight of Edward leading the charge against his enemy from your castle. There is a great love between the two of them, though neither will admit it, and Old Edward did not have the chance to see his son with his own eyes in action in France, if you will remember! Now, is all your doing!"

  Joan broke off abruptly.

  "—So, buss me now, James and Angie," she said briskly, "for I must go. My Edward has overdrunk tonight, it being the night it is, and will be no help. I have things to get ready before the morn and will need what sleep I may get."

  Jim and Angie both bussed—kissed—her farewell. Jim had always been embarrassed by this, the medieval custom of everybody kissing everybody else, and it made it no better that Joan was as attractive as she was and Angie was standing there watching. But he kissed Joan, and she kissed him whole-heartedly back, kissed Angie, and went out the door.

  "God keep you both!" she said as she disappeared.

  "You, too," Jim called after her, almost wordless himself by this time. The door shut behind her, and he turned to Angie.

  "Why did you let this happen?" he asked.

  "Because I thought she deserved the chance to tell you what she did, and because I wanted to see how you'd react."

  Jim grinned at her suddenly.

  "Did I pass the test, then?"

  "You did," she said. "With flying colors."

  "Good."

  "Good, but expected. I knew you would. Now, why don't you get into bed? I'll make your cup of tea while you're doing that."

  "There's nothing I'd like better," said Jim. He got started taking off his wedding finery. There was something almost sacramental about that end-of-day cup of tea, he thought, watching Angie finish the making of it.

  She gave him his cup, and he sipped on it, waiting for the tea in it to get down to the exact temperature he liked. She proceeded to get ready for bed herself, put out all the candles in the room, except the one on the table at Jim's side of the bed, and climbed in beside him.

  "The day's over," she said, taking his now-empty cup away to put it on her bedside table, before snuggling up to him.

  "And thank Heaven it is!" he answered her.

  He blew out the remaining candle flame beside him. In the darkness he could smell the last smoldering of its wick. Beside him, nestled against him, Angie was already breathing slowly and deeply—already asleep. Her day had been a long and hard one.

  Without warning, all the unhappiness over his failure to get rid of Geronde's scar came back over him in a rush. Why had he let this drift the way he had? Why hadn't he gone to Carolinus right away while the wound was fresh? Of course that was before he understood what magick could do here. But if he had just thought, he would have gone to Carolinus anyway, simply because he was the only one in this world who might help.

  The self-accusations poured blackly in on him. But before they could drag him down to their uttermost, lightless depths, sleep took him, also.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Jim slept like a log. Like a sodden log sunk to the ocean bottom three miles below the sea's surface. He had done a lot of sleeping lately, but he could never remember sleeping like this.

  He woke, not recognizing where he was for a second. But the mists cleared rapidly.

  Somehow he was back in his familiar bed and his familiar Solar—moved while he was dead asleep, obviously. It was late morning again, and he came all the way to consciousness.

  He felt extraordinarily good, for some reason. The big things—the great things—were now all under control. They had won the battle, the goblins were gone. The Prince and Joan would probably have left by now—happy. The King would be leaving, also happy—according to Joan. The wedding had gone off without a hitch, and Geronde had gotten Brian's gold back to him, legally.

  It was like the morning after a long-awaited family reunion—especially joyous, but over. The only bad part of the moment was that Angie was already up and gone. He wan
ted to tell her how well he felt, and he would have liked her there to make his first tea of the day… and now, of course, he must call in a servant—no, anything but that, it would taste like dishwater and spoil this marvelous day—or make it himself, and he had never managed to make it as well as Angie did.

  But why not? Good practice for him! In the long run maybe he'd learn how she worked the daily miracle. He bounced out of bed and swung the long, darkened metal rod of the hob, with the kettle on its end, in over the heart of the flames that would bring on a hard boil in no time at all.

  While he waited for it to do this, he pulled on a comforting old red, foot-length gown that had served him for several years now as a lounging robe, and sat back on the bed. As he did, the door opened. Angie stepped in, closing the door again tightly behind her without waiting for the servant to do it. Her hair was somewhat disheveled.

  "Where—?" he began, but that was as far as he got.

  "I've been helping Joan, and seeing her and Edward off!" she said. "Back in a minute. Robert's nurse thinks he's ailing with a cough! Maybe nonsense, but—be right back!"

  Reaching for the door behind her to go out, she checked before opening it.

  "I saw Geronde. Her scar's gone—say nothing to anybody! Be right back!"

  Then the door had opened and slammed shut again. She was gone before he could say a word.

  Scar gone?

  How?

  —No. NO! he told himself, the day cascading in ruins around him like a smashed window.

  He wouldn't even think about what Angie had just said until she got back. That, on top of everything else that had worked out so well, was too unbelievable to trust.

  One thing at a time—one thing at a time—he repeated to himself, trying to gather the shards of his earlier happiness back into being. But it would not be gathered. Forgetting all about the tea, he sat back with his shoulders against the high, hard backboard of his bed, Angie's news forcing its way into his thoughts.

  Scar gone? How could it be—this late? It was against all his building belief that raw magic was a natural force in this world, a stuff from which humans could make things happen—but only if they knew how to capture it—or if they could go into some unnatural high gear, as he had done in the end, at Tiverton. Was there another, freak, unconsciously magic-controlling person in the castle??

  The scar vanishing now was completely against everything he had ever taught himself—against all the knowledge of Carolinus, or even the scar-experienced wisdom of Son Won Phon. Also, it was absolutely, completely, against his own theory that had led Brian to spend his pre-wedding night in the chapel—more than Jim had ever expected him to do, but something, of course, he should have expected, knowing Brian's commitment to anything he had decided to undertake. He did nothing halfway, but all with all his heart and soul.

  Morever, Son Won Phon would not have told him his magick had not worked—nor left—if he had thought there was the smallest of chances of it still working.

  Ugly possibilities jumped to Jim's mind. What if Angie's news was right, but the change was only temporary? What if in a few days, or even after a few months, the scar came back—ruining all Geronde's happiness at losing it and giving her back all her original sorrow?

  Above all—what if it had been his own attempt to help, on top of Son Won Phon's magick, that caused the scar to go and then return? He would never forget—never be able to repair what he had done. He was only a half-baked apprentice magician, after all, for all his proud theories based on the logic of a time six hundred years later.

  The thought was unbearable.

  And how could he explain to Angie—as he undoubtedly would try to do, sooner or later—that he was responsible? Tell her because he could not bear the burden on his conscience any more?

  She would be shocked, of course—though she would hide it, and try to comfort him, telling him he had intended well, and in any case no one could do anything about it.

  He could imagine her saying, if the scar came back, and in spite of the fact Geronde was her best friend, "She got over it once. She'll do it again." And of course that brave little mite would. She had all the courage in the world. But, God, women for all their capability for gentleness and love, could be shockingly hard at times in practical matters, or if something else—children or husband or some other thing, had priority for them—sometimes hardest on their own sex.

  He remembered May Heather—a ministering angel to those in the Nursing Room—saying to him about the hazing of little thirteen-year-old Lise, "…Got to have some of that in life, m'lord…"

  Or was it simply a trait men did not have?

  No. As always men and women were not all that different, men could be hard among themselves as well. He remembered the time, a few years ago, when he was relatively new to this world—when he, with Dafydd and others, including some of Jim's men-at-arms, had driven off a gang of sea raiders who had come ashore, as sometimes happened, to sack Brian's half-ruined and lightly defensible Smythe Castle.

  The trained and armored fighting men had waded through the unarmored, untrained pirates, though they had been double in number.

  Jim, himself—also untrained then, but carried away by the fight and feeling invulnerable in his mail and helm—had been driving before him a lank ruffian with no more than a long knife, thinking that winning this sort of battle was a snap, when his opponent unexpectedly kicked him—up under the lower edge of his mail shirt, directly in the groin. Suddenly he had been bent over double with pain, and the lank pirate had escaped safely, just about as the rest of the raiders decided to flee. Brian had come hastily to see how he had been wounded. But when Jim told him, this tried-and-true comrade burst into uproarious laughter, slapping Jim heartily on the shoulder.

  "Never fear, lad!" Brian had shouted, in the middle of his laughing. "Wilt not die of it!"

  Jim grinned, remembering—and in spite of himself felt somewhat better. Brian had been right, of course. A kick in the privates was nothing in a fight when swords and knives were out—nothing at all in that sort of a day's work.

  Jim also remembered that after a first burst of anger, he had not really been upset at Brian's lack of sympathy, even then. Annoyed by it, yes but not upset. Dafydd, and Danielle who had also been into the fighting—there were no glass curtains for women when lives were at stake, in these centuries, and face it, Danielle was certainly a better knife-, and probably a better sword-fighter than he would ever be, while as an archer she was simply and plainly forever out of his sight—both Dafydd and she had both been in easy earshot of Brian's words and the laughter.

  But somehow Brian's response was part of what men were, and were expected to be—in any time.

  No, that kind of reaction among the people of this time had not gotten under Jim's skin.

  But he realized now that there was something, much more recent, that rankled in him—the unexpected, apparently total absence of feeling in all the men, from the King down to Brian himself, at the deathbed of Sir Verweather. They had uttered words of forgiveness as if engaged in some ritual, but to Jim's ear there had been no actual emotion or true compassion for the dying man. That had gotten under Jim's skin.

  He had not expected, by now, to feel that way.

  But with women, with all their demonstrated capability for gentleness and kindness, hardness came as a shock, the first time a male encountered it. Not that he had even seen or heard Angie—

  The door burst open again, slammed behind her, and she was back.

  "Just as I thought!" she said, charging into the room. "Nothing at all. False alarm! No temperature, forehead cool, happy and gurgling—what are you doing, boiling the kettle dry?" She was about to swing the kettle off the flames, when she hesitated.

  "Were you trying to make yourself some tea? Was that it? There's enough left in the kettle for one cup anyway, and it's all ready to go. Want me to make it? Jim, you don't look—is something wrong with what I said?"

  "No, no…" he said qu
ickly. "Just something else. You see—but it's all rather complicated. Would you make a cup for me, please? There's sort of a tangle, but with some tea in me, I could probably explain it better."

  "Of course!" she said, and looked at him worriedly. She took the kettle off the hob. "You sit right there. Don't move. Just stay the way you are."

  "I won't," he said. "It's just that magick can be tricky stuff—"

  "Don't try to tell me now. Just sit there and breathe quietly. Relax, we've got all the time in the world. You can tell me after you've had your tea."

  "I keep trying things, that's the trouble—"

  "Sit. Breathe. Don't move! Don't think!"

  "Yes," he said, on the breath of a heavy sigh, and stopped trying to talk.

  But he could not help thinking.

  If only he'd asked Carolinus before talking to Brian, told one of the three best Magickians in this world what his theory was first. But now there was no way to mend it. Son Won Phon's magick had been balled up, and once magick was twisted, there'd be no way of straightening it out—

  "No!" he shouted, suddenly joyous—and found Angie handing him a steaming cup.

  "I'm wrong!" he babbled at her. "I forgot—"

  "Don't spill the tea!"

  "Right!" he said, still happily. The scent of the tea rose to his nostrils. Oh blessed cup! somebody had called it once. He sipped. It was magnificent, and not too hot to drink fast. He gulped.

  "It's all right!" he said, beaming up at Angie and handing her back the empty cup. "It's absolutely all right. No hurry now. You tell me first—what was this good news you came charging in with?"

  "You're sure you're all right?"

  "I am now. You tell me."

  "Little Robert's not sick at all!"

  "Yes—yes. But about Geronde…"

  "Geronde!" Angie shouted. She almost slammed down the empty teacup on the bedside table by her right hip, spun around and headed for the food and drink wardrobe. "Geronde's scar's gone! This is a celebration! I'm going to have a cup of tea, too! Do you want another?—No. Wine! Wine for me, anyway!"