The Dragon Waiting

by John M. Ford

  "Hastings doesn't propose anything, beyond that I can raise a thousand men, which is fairly common knowledge too." The men chuckled. "But his implication is plain enough. The Queen's family has had the Prince's governance his whole life; would it surprise anyone if they tried to keep it?" Richard put the letter down, tapped his fingers against his dagger hilt.

  Gregory looked around at the officers in the room. They were, he knew, all Richard's liegemen. According to law, their first allegiance was to the King of England, but their oath was to Richard, and it was not the King's grace that kept the rain off their heads.

  Individual fealty versus collective loyalty: Gregory had seen them in tension wherever he had gone. It was a way of life in Germany, and Byzantium, and perhaps it was most viciously played out in the University at Alexandria. Wherever the field, Gregory had never known fealty to take second place.

  Gregory went silently from the room, climbed the stairs. If Richard wanted the wheeled guns for his march to London, they were ready; Dimitrios could answer tactical questions better than he.

  He entered his outer apartment, his workroom. Wood-fiber boards were fitted over the windows, and diagrams pinned to them. Richard's only complaint about Gregory's working budget had been a joking one over his pin expenses. They did have to be silver: iron would rust and stain the papers, and an order to Germany for nickel pins had never been filled.

  Suddenly pleased he had thought of it, he pulled half a dozen pins and stuck them inside his baggy sleeve. They tended to disappear in his absence. The chambermaids took them, but not for their own use; they went to the stable lads and pages, who had young ladies to impress. Which girls might have been less taken with their gifts, had they known how they were bought. But then, he thought, the boys might not like to know what the pins went on to buy. Some of them no doubt returned to his drawing-boards, repurchased in coined silver.

  He turned down his sleeve and patted the gray cloth. He was at the center of a whole little economy of pins.

  He went into the farther room, which was dark but for the fireplace, and saw a figure sitting on the bed. She turned her head quickly. "Elayne?" he said, for her benefit; he could see her clearly. She was wearing a clean apron and cap over her gown and kirtle, cloth slippers on her rather large feet.

  "They says you're leaving, Professor," she said, not hesitantly; Elayne was not a hesitant woman. "With the Duke an' comp'ny, to Lunnon."

  "Yes."

  "Why must you go?" No, not hesitant at all. "You haven't seen Midlum when the Duke's gone of winter. It's so quiet, an' the big house empty as anything."

  "I've been asked to go."

  "But not ordered? An' you anyway aren't the Duke's close man." She seemed to sense a triumph coming.

  "I must go," he said, because it was only the truth and he would not see her falsely hoping, if hope was the name for her feeling toward him. A royal duke might for reasons keep a pet vampire, but he would keep its chain short, and he would not leave it winterbound in a castle where his wife was. Gregory supposed that Elayne understood this, but feared to insult him by saying it.

  "I ha'ant been to the City," she said. "Is it a long way?"

  For an instant he was startled, but of course she meant London, not Byzantium. "A few days, if the roads remain clear."

  "You'll want not to be hungry, then."

  He sat very still as she stood, removed her apron, and opened her gown. She knelt at his feet; he untied the laces of her kirtle. His hands did not tremble; he wondered if that pleased or disappointed her. Her fingers sought out the hooks that held his gown. She shivered.

  He felt the flow of saliva, and a heavy sensation in his chest near his heart. He must feed first, to dull the edge of hunger, and then she could take her pleasure at length. He reached to the bedside table, closed his hand on a shallow wooden cup.

  She sat down on the bed, cradled against his arm, pale in the firelight; alabaster and porphyry. He stroked her with his fingertips, watching her smile and the curve of her spine, to distract himself. The tension was growing much too rapidly, as if he had been starving, which he had not.

  He had found her at the worst possible time for both of them. He had been in the kitchen, looking for the crock of warm blood discreetly put out for him (as one might feed a biting dog), when he heard an odd sound from the pantry. Elayne stood all alone, in kirtle and apron but no gown, hair loose, making a whimpering noise as she throttled back tears. She had chewed a thumbnail until it was bleeding freely.

  First he meant to turn and go; but it had been months since he had even tasted human blood, and he supposed he would kiss the wound, keeping his teeth together, taking only a little on his lips. Then he took her hand and she bowed awkwardly, tried to explain herself, and he thought he must be polite and listen

  The fire flickered high. Elayne was gasping, just slightly; Gregory shifted his fingers and she made a soft, delighted sound. She would notice no pain when he opened the vessel. He had been told, more than once, that pain and fear made the blood taste even richer and better; they said it about arousal, too. Gregory admitted the possibility of unusual humors being released into the bloodflow, but he did not really believe it.

  He hoped that his taste would never become so jaded that he would need to believe such things.

  The thought made him hesitate. It was less than four weeks since he had drunk from her. There was no threat—he knew the safe times and quantities as well as any society patient knew the Latin names of his diseases—but how else would his tastes grow tired except through overindulgence?

  And yet he was leaving soon, and might not be back in months, if at all.

  He wondered again which of Richard's horsemen had cast her off, left her crying in the kitchen; she would not give his name, fearing one man's wrath, or the other's. Doubtless Dimitrios would know, but since the Scottish disaster Dimi had been too busy for conversation.

  He saw that she was pleased, but that did not surprise him; he had earned his board that way before. He wanted to know if she was happy.

  The Minnesanger whined that love was a hunger, and men perished for its want. That was shit, Gregory thought. Blood was his hunger, and if he wanted for it long enough he would not pine away but lose his reason, probably kill, until he was fed. Or was shot down in the street like any frothing dog. And so he must drink, from sweet trusting maids, while he was able to stop drinking.

  He felt her calf with his thumb, finding the strong femoral pulse, positioning the wooden mazer. He took a pin from the sleeve of his coat, thinking, Here are two commodities whose markets I control.

  At the scent of it, he felt a fire in his head, and he drank the cupful quickly, trying not to taste it at all, afraid that it might be much too delicious, and that it might not be delicious enough.

  Gregory was wandering over the walls of York in the midmorning sun, dressed in a full-skirted white gown and a flat hat with a broad, floppy brim, gloves of white pigskin. He looked somewhat priestly, all dazzling on a bright cold day, and most people only nodded as they passed. If they did more, his story was that he was an engineer inspecting the city defenses for Duke Richard.

  While it was strictly true, Gregory thought it was a ridiculous excuse: York was the largest city in the North of England, and one of the most elaborately defended. It would take a month, not to mention a team of surveyors with instruments, to cover all the ramparts and ditches, gun-angles and palisades.

  But if the people who heard the explanation thought it was silly or suspicious, they did not say so. One offered blessings on Richard in the name of the divine Hadrian, saying "And tell him that York loves His Grace as he loves us, no matter who is king." Another required three repetitions of the message before saying "Well, fancy that of the Duke of York, an' un so young.... So wise so young da'n't live long, they say."

  Gregory sat on a rampart, put his hand up on a swivel-mounted bronze saker. The metal of the gun was heavily verdigrised, and there were white streaks in the green
: names and initials carved with the points of knives. A string of crooked characters spelled out take that skotlanders!

  Pulling the brim of his hat to shade his eyes, he looked toward the center of the city, at the dome of the Pantheon. It was not a spherical dome, such as that of the Eastern City's Kyklos Sophia, but a cone of twelve triangular panels. Where the base of each panel met its supporting wall there was a plate, pierced with holes in the pattern of a constellation. The plates were all black, but of four different materials: lacquered oak for the earth signs, obsidian for the water, black marble with a wispy figure for the air, and iron for fire.

  The roof beams were of oak, the triangular panels a wooden lattice of ashwood and thornwood, white and black intertwined.

  Richard and all his company were beneath the dome just now, swearing oaths to faithfully serve the new King Edward the Fifth. That was why Gregory was out here alone with his sore eyes and lame excuses: the oath, it was specified, was to be taken in blood.

  A man was riding up. Gregory heard him long before he could see him. A dark horse, dark rider: Richard's man James Tyrell.

  "Good morning, Sir Gregory."

  "Good day to you, Sir James. Do you come to call me back? I had thought to hear bells, or something, when the ceremony was over."

  Tyrell swung out of the saddle. Palomides gave Gregory an unfriendly look. Tyrell said "It isn't over, but by your return it will be." He hesitated. "My reasons for... abstaining... are my own."

  "I don't believe I asked them. I'll be coming, then."

  "Sir Gregory, I would like to ask you something."

  Gregory nodded.

  "I was not ordered to ask this. It is a confidence, between knights."

  "As you say," Gregory said, coolly curious. Tyrell was the only person in more than twenty years to call him knight. He wondered if the Englishman was aware of the differences between Fachritter' schaft and the sort of knighthood he knew; if he would even call von Bayern "sir" if he were. Then, of course, in England it was not necessary that an engineer have formal rank before a baron would take his advice.

  "The pantry girl at Mid'lam, Elayne..."

  Gregory's curiosity peaked, though he did not display it. Was Tyrell going to confess to having abandoned the woman?

  "May she acquire your... disease, sir?" It was politely said, but no less a demand.

  Gregory thought that he had been very careless, very stupid. He considered how he might disable Tyrell without killing him; he had no dislike for Tyrell, and certainly none for Richard, and the man was only protecting his master.

  But Gregory was not carrying his small gun—more stupid carelessness. Tyrell's sword was on the far side of his saddle. They would both have knives— Tyrell was a soldier, but Gregory knew the line of every blood vessel in the body.

  "No, Sir James," he said, watching Tyrell's eyes for the first motion of attack. "You have my word as a Fachritter von Bayern that she cannot become diseased." Supposing he simply offered to leave England—but no, he would have as much chance of persuading this man as of riding away on his horse if he did kill him. He wondered if Tyrell knew that vampires' strength was one of the true bits of the legend. "I have had women before I have passed the disease to none of them."

  He was angry with himself, but his anger was entirely cold. Whores were better, he thought. They never spoke, never offered when you did not want to pay, and most of all never lied about where their pleasures came from.

  "I thank you, sir," Tyrell was saying, and turning to mount his horse again.

  Gregory waited.

  "An she were sick, t'would be Tyrell's job of surgery," he said, with his more usual roughness; then, just a little more softly, "Not a task I wanted, Sir Knight, but there it is. Thanks again, sir, and since I can't wish you good health, then merry meet again."

  Gregory watched him ride away, then stood up from the gun mount, adjusted his clothes, and began walking toward the Pantheon.

  There was a sound from the southeast, probably still two miles distant. He knew, even before he saw the riders and the spearpoints, that it was a troop of soldiers on the move; several hundred at least. They were coming from the direction of Wales, where Rivers, the King's governor, had been.

  Gregory steered his gown around a patch of slush and took the straight way to the Pantheon. It would be the safest place, whoever won the fight. He had decided long ago never to lie to save himself, but to claim that he desired divine protection was no lie at all. It was not his fault that other people chose to believe in gods.

  As Richard emerged from the Pantheon, Ratcliffe and Dimitrios a step behind him, linen bandages stained bright on their forearms, the dusty new force of men around them raised arms in salute, and their leader walked forward with his hands spread wide.

  "Harry!" Richard said. "Oh, well met, Harry!" Then he squinted against the sun, at all the lances in array. "Well. You're not out for your health, either. What does it all mean, Harry?"

  Harry was a handsome man, hazel-eyed and clean-shaven, running to stoutness but not fat. He was wearing a coat of steel plates covered in wine-colored velvet embroidered with heraldic knots, and red leather riding trews. His swagger was as natural to see as a duck swimming. Dimi knew his type quite well: the cavalry coronal, of whatever army, who had outgrown his rashness but never his dash, and would now be settling down toward a long career of charges led and charges remembered, finally to die charging death on his favorite mount, four-legged or otherwise. Even the Swiss coronals were like that. For such men, powder and shot might never have been invented.

  If this man was his master's friend, Dimi thought, there must be some good order in the world.

  "You're here with twice my numbers, Dickon; I'd thought you knew twice as well what it means—and at that, this ride may be for our health. Didn't Hastings write to you?"

  "He did. But he was very cautious."

  "Cautious!" Harry slapped dust from his knee. "Yes, I can't fault that. Hastings is in London, in the midst of Woodvilles. In a forest of Woodvilles, eh, Richard? A very thicket of'em." He laughed, not dryly. "And now Rivers brings in the royal roebuck, Anthony the great warrior—"

  "Enough, Harry," Richard said, suddenly sharp. Then, quietly, he said "We need to talk, but not out here bleeding in the cold. Dick, Dimi, come along."

  As they walked from the Pantheon court, Harry said "I haven't met your new man, Dickon. Foreign, isn't he? From the Middle Sea?"

  "This is Dimitrios Ducas, Captain of Cavalry. Say he's not a good Englishman and you'll answer to me. Dimi, this is Sir Henry Stafford, the Duke of Buckingham, up from Brecon in Wales."

  Richard Duke of Gloucester sat beneath a painting of his father, Richard Duke of York. The father's features were stronger than the son's, and he had been a physically larger man; but York had been painted at ease, and Richard burned with intensity.

  Buckingham sat facing Richard. Ratcliffe and Dimitrios flanked the fire. Tyrell leaned against the wall, in a shadow; Dimi wondered where he had been this morning. They were gathered in a small town house, built by Richard of York just within the outer walls of York city. It was designed after the new style, large-windowed and thin-walled, built for comfort rather than massiveness, acknowledging that guns were now and forever dividing forts from houses.

  Buckingham poured another cup of Armagnac brandy. "It was Edward's will that you be Protector of England; the lords know it, and the commons too—old women in Wales know it, Dickon, so why do you pretend you don't?"

  "Because I don't think Edward had any serious plan for a Protectorate at all," Richard said. "I certainly don't think he meant to die before he was forty."

  Buckingham said "All plans are made in the dark. I can't tell you Edward was the wisest of men, but he did have a care for his sons. And for England."

  "Hear, hear, for England," Richard said.

  "Surely Hastings's letter said that the Queen's faction is proposing a Council of Regency."

  "If he'd written it in th
e tone you say it, the paper would have burned."

  "You know what you would do on a Council, Richard: you'd count Woodville votes against you." He took a swallow of brandy, leaned forward in his chair. "There's the other possibility. It's been said—never in the open, mind, but how much is open about this?— that the Prince already has a Protector, in whom King Edward must surely have been well satisfied, else how would his son's knightly upbringing be—"

  Richard stood up. "Either stop bringing Anthony into this, or accuse him, Harry. Hastings implies, you suggest—will someone bloody say something?"

  "Very well, Dickon, facts. Anthony Woodville has possession of the next King of England, body and very possibly soul. Rivers is moving to London with armed men, to hand the King over to his sister. Right now, if my Lord Hastings's letters have been successful, we have Rivers outnumbered." He stood then, to face Richard eye to eye, and spoke without haste. "If you do not take possession of the King now, before he enters London... you will never possess him."

  "We are talking about my brother's son." Richard's hand was tight on the hilt of his knife. Then he turned it. "But we're not, are we. He's not just a boy any longer."

  "Nor a king, yet," Ratcliffe said quietly. Richard looked at him, surprised.

  Buckingham said "As a puppet on Woodville strings, he could be the ruination of many good men." Then he folded his arms, looked at the floor. The fire cracked and threw up sparks.

  Richard tapped some more brandy, tossed it back. "Where were Rivers and the King when the news reached them?"

  "Ludlow," Buckingham said. "They were ten days leaving, for some reason."

  Richard said "Tyrell?"

  After only a moment's pause, Sir James said "With quick marches, we could be ready for them at Northampton."

  "I don't... like that," Buckingham said nervously.

  "What, Harry, faint of heart so soon?" Richard said, with a determined expression.

  "My father died at Northampton."

  "I know. I also know what he was trying to do there." Richard stared into Buckingham's eyes. "He was trying to keep a king from being taken by force. Well, blast, Stafford, my father died not a year after, trying to make a king. And when they killed your sire, they didn't cut off his head and stick it on a pike, with a paper crown to suit the bitch-goddess's fancy. Nor was your brother's head on another spike beside it... so don't you tell me what places are ill-omened.