by John M. Ford
Richard muttered "And one more thing. Say something, George, blast it; call him a fat booby, say anything. What can he do to you now?"
George stood entirely silent before the court.
"... and all his properties and possessions."
A hammer came down, and it was law.
Dimitrios said "How do the English put a royal duke to death?"
"My father had his head hacked off," Richard said. "But I don't think Edward will want anything so spectacular." He looked across the hall at George, still motionless. "Perhaps we should ask George."
Cynthia gave the Irish stableboy her medical bag, and he lashed it into place on her horse's pack; it was the last thing to be loaded.
Dimitrios said "I hear Wales is beautiful. I hope you find it so." He held out his hand; she took it, then said "Fare you well, Dimi. Minerva watch you," and put her arm around his shoulder, touched her cheek to his.
"Take care, dear," Cecily said. "And take care of Peredur; he's older than he claims." They hugged. The Duchess said "Careful, dear, so am I," and pressed something into Cynthia's hand. It was the silver owl. Cynthia looked up, starting to shake her head, but the Duchess folded her fingers closed on the pendant. "Call it a loan. Till you visit again."
"I wish you were all coming with me," Richard told Hywel. "We'll need healing, and magic couldn't hurt."
"I hope you don't need too much healing," Hywel said, "and magic always hurts."
Richard turned to Dimitrios. "You see? He's still talking like that. Good roads and company, Peredur. Good days and dreams, Doctor Ricci."
Dimi helped Cynthia onto her horse, while Hywel slowly got into his own saddle.
A hand thrust toward Cynthia. Gregory stood there, in cloak over tight-belted gown, the sun reflecting from his glasses. He held his hand steady, within her reach, but made no effort to touch her. For a few moments the wind made all sounds and motions.
Cynthia put her hand in Gregory's. He kissed the knuckle, let go-
She said "I'll see you, won't I, Gregory... when you come back from Scotland?"
"And you come back from Wales."
The boys handed the reins to the riders, and Hywel and Cynthia rode away from the house, up Thames Street to Old Dean's Lane, and there turned out of sight.
Dimi said "I guess you had to do that. Before she went away."
Gregory looked up the street and said nothing.
"These last few days, I've been afraid we'd find you with her knife in your heart."
Gregory said "I haven't had any fear of that at all."
There were no windows in the little room under the Bloody Tower, and the candles within did little to brighten it. The air was thick with closeness, and sweat, and the fumes of wine.
It was crowded. Richard Plantagenet, Duke of Gloucester, was in the room, and with him Dimitrios Ducas and Gregory von Bayern, and Sir James Tyrell, a man of Richard's household just arrived to accompany his master back to the North.
There were two other men, in leather aprons and coarse linen shirts; the shirts were soaked with red wine. They had carried in the last man in the room, who lay on his back on a rough trestle table: George Plantagenet, attainted traitor, condemned, dead.
George's body was sodden with the strong red wine called malmsey; he lay in a puddle of it, it ran from his ears and nostrils, it matted his hair and beard. His brown gown was saturated. One of his slippers was missing.
Richard touched George's cheek, moved his head. The open eyes stared, red-filmed.
" 'E didn't 'ardly struggle none, sor," said one of the aproned men. "Said 'e'd got wot few men 'as 'ad, enough wine t'sate 'im."
"Course, we wasn't gon'ter larf," the other man said, "but 'is Grice wanted us to. 'Is former Grice, 'at is."
"Very well," Richard said. He took a sack from his belt; it clanked when he set it next to George's head.
The first man said "'E'd a word for you, Yer Grace, an it please you."
Richard did not look up from his brother's face. "Well?"
'"E said 'e didn' blame Yer Grace."
Richard turned to Tyrell and said, "All right, that's the end of it," and went out of the room, followed by all the living.
Just outside the door was a pile of stone blocks and a tub of mortar. The aproned men stripped off their wine-soaked shirts, tossed them into the room, and began to stir the mortar.
"An it please Yor Grice..."
Richard said "You've two jobs to do and be paid for. You weren't hired as messengers."
Richard and Tyrell, Dimi and Gregory walked on down the corridor. From behind, they could hear the sounds of the workmen stealing the candles from the little room.
When they were out of the halls, under a black sky without moon or stars, Richard began to chuckle softly.
"Are you well, sir?" Tyrell said, reaching for the Duke's arm.
Richard pushed him away. "Fine, James. Go ahead and laugh, James; he wanted us to. I've only just thought. George had his last joke on Edward tonight, and like all the best nasty jokes, the butt of this one won't understand it. 'Enough wine to sate him,' indeed. When King Edward puts a finger down his throat at dinner, for the joy of gorging double."
Shortly his solitary laughter died away. As they passed out of the courtyard, Richard suddenly pounded his fist on the stone wall and shouted, "Do any of you read stories?"
Dimi said "Stories, Your Grace?"
"You know. Storybooks. My mother has every one ever made, I think. And... in every story I ever read with brothers in it, one of them kills the other. Well. Here's George dead. But in the stories there's always some reason."
Richard shook his head, as if trying to clear it of wine vapors. Still angrily but less loudly, he said "There's nothing left to do in bloody London. I'm ready to go." He faced Dimi and Gregory. "Will you come with me, and chase Scotsmen? There's no glory in it, and it's terrible for your soul, but by the Dog it's the only war we've got. And the pay is good." He smiled, with the blackest of humor. "I know, I'm the paymaster."
Dimi gave a brief glance to Tyrell, who stood quietly by; then, with his mouth open as if he had just understood a mysterious thing, he looked at Gregory. Gregory had removed his glasses, and his eyes were very white in the night.
The men marched on up the street, singing in four languages songs about blood and fire.
Chapter Eight
DOWN
THEY had a boar, in the Yorkshire snow.
An old beast, someone had said, gray-bristled, surprised while it rooted in the iron earth. Now they had three dogs dead, a horse down and its rider hurt, a beater maybe worse than hurt. And the brachets were yelping, racing each other through the brake, throwing up snow; the archers nocked arrows, and spears pricked the colorless sky. The horn wound long, for no useful reason.
Dimitrios supposed the ninny with the horn must not be of Richard's cavalry; a glimpse of Sir James Tyrell grimacing confirmed it. No matter who or where, a man's household always had a few like that; this Dimi knew without quite allowing himself to think it.
But gods, the hunting had been good.
The barking ahead increased. The riders pricked and whispered. Richard appeared then, suddenly on the right, dark cloak afloat, spear of white ashwood held like a standard, or a thunderbolt. He rode a strong white mare named Surrey. He looked at Dimi and Tyrell, gestured with the hand that held the reins, then rode on. The two men followed.
Tyrell called his horse Palomides; it was a dark brown gelding of terrifying aspect and worse manners in its owner's absence, the grooms' dread. Richard had given Dimi a white mare much like the Duke's own—though given was the wrong word, Dimi well knew. Olwen was loaned to him, as he was allowed a room in Gloucester's house and meals at his table. A mercenary was entitled to those things, and gave service in return. No more was implied, or expected.
The three men had pulled clear of the main body of the hunt; they passed a startled beater, who waved his cap. The ride was very silent, snow muffling hoov
es, no leaves to rustle in their passing.
There was a little hump of ground ahead, maybe a dozen yards long and two or three high; beyond it, snow was flying. There were barks, and snaps, and grunts. A signal from Richard, and Tyrell broke right, Richard and Dimi passing to the left; all cutting corners, jumping the ends of the rise.
The dogs had the boar outside its nest. There were bushes and branches and rocks all around; the winter had stripped the bushes and picked the stones out dark on snow, and still it was a good bit of concealment. Then they were right, Dimi thought; it was an old boar, clever, dangerous. He could see the baying hounds now, but not the quarry.
Then he saw it, as the gray head thrust up and a long steely tusk ripped a dog open. Blood went everywhere. The hound made a noise more surprised than hurt.
It was a big beast, neatly white, as if stones and branches and dirty snow had grown tusks and a temper. Dimi glanced at Richard, at the White Boar badge on the Duke's breast. Richard's face was set hard, flushed in the cold.
The hounds were still in the fight, biting at hide that was like studded leather; there was more dark blood, impossible to tell what animal's. Another hound was gored, in the throat. It gave a gurgling whimper.
Richard showed his teeth. Without speaking or signaling, he pointed his spear and brought White Surrey to the trot.
Tyrell looked concerned, but calm. He nodded to Dimi, and they pursued.
Richard called to the hounds, and they scattered as the horse bore down. The boar tossed a carcass after them, as if in contempt.
Richard dipped his spear and drove for the throat.
The gray head swung, and the spear grazed it, cut into the flank, skidded out. The boar growled, snorted, aimed for Surrey's forelegs.
Richard wheeled and struck the boar with the side of his spear, barely cutting it but spoiling its charge. Man and beast recoiled. The Duke stabbed, and this time the point bit in. Richard leaned on the shaft as the boar turned, tried to pull itself free.
Tyrell struck from the other flank, his spear sinking to its cross- guard. He levered upward; the tusks tipped back, the snout pointing at the sky. A bit of throatskin showed pale.
Dimi's point found the spot. Blood ran, steaming. The pig shrieked. The three of them held it like that, struggling on their spearpoints, until at last it closed its eyes and was still.
The rest of the mounted party was reaching them now. A squire, perched on the hump of earth above the nest, started to raise a cheer. "Hush," Dimi said, without thinking. Everyone was silent.
The boar rose again, fighting. The spears still held it. The squire stared. Archers and spearmen held their poses. Richard said "Shamming won't save you, Sir Hog," not gloating.
At length the beast went down for good, and the squire got to lead his cheer.
Richard leaned on his spear, as if suddenly exhausted. He said to Dimitrios, "The head's yours, if you want it, Captain." The Duke had a vague smile; Tyrell, a more definite one.
"Thank you, Your Grace." Dimi dismounted, drew his long sword. There was a good bit of slicing before the head came free, rolling half over in the brown snow. Dimi wiped his blade, noting the nicks the good Eastern edge had taken on neckbones and spines; he sheathed the sword. Finally he picked up the ugly trophy—it weighed a good thirty pounds—and hoisted it onto the forepart of his saddle. Olwen gave a disconsolate whinny.
Richard said "Now there's a soldier for you—who else would volunteer to ride home with that thing in his lap?" As the party laughed and clapped, Dimi saw the Duke's small nod toward him, heard him say, much more softly, "Chairi, miles."
Hail, soldier: not an improper, or even rare, thing for one brother in the Mysteries to say to another. They were both of Miles rank, for different causes but the same reason—too much else to do.
But it was an unexpected thing for the Duke to say just now, and as they rode back to Middleham, Dimi looked from one White Boar's head to the other, and remembered what Duchess Cecily had said about her son: she wondered what he intended to do.
After the Duke of Clarence was dead, they had gone from London to Nottingham, a town overlooked by a castle on a stark thrusting rock. The castle had a high, solitary tower; Richard admitted to a "barely healthy" fondness for the tower room, its view of the fortress, the town, and the Forest of Sherwood that spread over two hundred square miles.
For two weeks Richard heard reports of bailiffs and tax collectors, oversaw trials, hanged poachers of his brother's venison. There was a strange, messy case of a poacher taken wearing green clothing, with robin feathers in his cap and a robin's eggshell hung around his neck with ribbon—or, the foresters said he was a poacher; the man would say nothing.
Richard explained to Dimitrios that, not long after Edward had become king, a man called Robin Mend-All led an uprising against him in the North. "You know of Robin Hood, of course "
"No, Your Grace."
"No? Well, he's a sturdy yeoman who springs up to shoot at bad Plantagenet kings when their good relatives are away. If he can't shoot us personally, he takes out his grievance on our deer."
"Is this man a rebel, then, Your Grace?"
Richard looked thoughtful. "Mend-All was a respectable gentleman named Conyers, hired by my infinitely ambitious father-in-law Warwick to raise the countryside. But they're both years dead." He fingered the hilt of his dagger. "As is Henry the Idiot, and Coeur- de-Lion. So I don't know what this man is."
So they put the poacher to the question, burned him a little and scourged him and finally racked him apart, and they found out nothing.
"I don't understand," Richard said, turning the little blue eggshell over in his fingers. "We'd only have hanged him for the deer. Why would an ordinary robber want to be taken for anything more?" He made to crush the hollow shell, then stopped, and placed it carefully on a table. That afternoon, they set out northward.
Middleham Castle was an enormous cluster of buildings, old enough to be defensible and new enough to provide some comforts. Its two central buildings measured over fifty yards wide by nearly a hundred long, and rose four storeys; the walls were rectilinear, pleasing to the eye (though Gregory expressed professional doubts), the lead roofs slanting this way and gabled that way, black as void in the sunless afternoon.
It had been the centerpiece of the Neville estates; it was part of what Richard had married, and now he and his wife and son lived there by choice.
As the hunting party trooped through the gates, horses snuffling, people coughing, hounds yapping with that limitless mindless energy peculiar to dogs and small children, there was a deep, loud, rumbling boom from the outer court, and smoke rose.
Dimitrios looked up. Gregory von Bayern was standing next to a bronze canister set upon a stone block. The smoking cylinder seemed quite small to have produced so much noise. Gregory was drawing with chalk on slate, and that too made a surprising amount of very irritating noise. He wore a heavy cloak, a broad-brimmed hat, and doeskin gloves. He had been dressing warmly of late. Dimi wondered how much of the castle population knew that Ahriman's Serpent was among them. He was no longer surprised by what could be hidden in the midst of men.
The boar's head was displayed on a platter, carried three times around the high-ceilinged great hall; a minstrel with a good voice and indifferent lute-picking sang the boar-hunting verses from Ga- waine. Someone suggested that, in the spirit of the poem, the head ought to be presented to one who had stayed in the castle, in exchange for whatever he had won that day.
Gregory stared at the platter set before him. Wasn't that a dainty dish, Dimi thought, and tried to recall who had suggested the game, and what reason someone might have had for baiting vampires at dinner.
Gregory stood up slowly. In his densest German accent, he said "Today I was conducting Zersprungsdruckprufungs... ach, das bedeu'tet bursting-pressure tests, on a simulated breech "He produced some notes from the sleeves of his gown.
There were shouts of "You win the trade, you win!" and "What w
ere you expecting, a kiss?" Gregory sat down. Dimi relaxed.
The boar, unfortunately, made better spectacle than dinner. The meat was tough and dense, coarse on the tongue. A great deal of beer and wine were called for, and the meal ended early and awash.
Dimi went out to the stables by the light of a half moon through broken clouds. James Tyrell was there, tending Palomides; he nodded to Dimi and went out. The grooms looked at TyreU's horse, and at Dimitrios, and seemed at once to think of important tasks elsewhere.
Dimi stroked Olwen's mane. She whickered softly. Palomides was quiet. Surrey seemed to be asleep.
"You're fond of her, aren't you." It was Richard, standing in the doorway, holding a tin lantern. "I knew it when you first saw her."
"I had a white mare when I was young," Dimi said.
"Oh? Lucky Raven. I wanted one. All the great knights I read about—storybooks, you know—they all had white horses. White stallions, in the stories, but I wasn't that stupid even then. Gods, I wanted a snow-white horse."
Dimitrios was puzzled. Luna had been his as soon as his father was convinced he was ready to care for her; what were the sons of English lords denied? Finally he said "Couldn't you have one?" It was not a polite question, but he had discovered that mercenaries could often get away with an honest rudeness.
Richard looked across the stables, to White Surrey's stall, and smiled. "I'm sure I could have, for the asking. I was a duke's son, after all. And that was the problem. I had this idea, quite as much gotten from books as the original notion of a white horse, that as a duke's son I was obligated not to ask for the things I wanted. Does that make any sense to you?"
Dimi thought about telling Richard some of his history... who and what his father had been. But all he said was "It makes sense to me, Your Grace."