The Dragon Waiting

by John M. Ford

  "I'm sorry," Dimitrios said. "A man with any honor or wit would have understood the invitation for what it was. Your thanks are sufficient, and accepted. Good night, Mistress Shore."

  "Wait, Captain... please wait."

  He stopped in the doorway.

  "It is... difficult to know what to tell a man who has rescued one from a dungeon."

  Especially, Dimi thought, when that man helped to put you there. He turned. She sat on the edge of the bed, framed by the gold-tasseled canopy. Her sleeves were unbuttoned, and her hair was loose... though it had been severely cut.

  She was smiling.

  Dimitrios said "Dungeons aren't very... conversational places, I know."

  "No. There is no weather down there, nor any news, except what they think will persuade one to confess. And 'are you well?' is the cruelest thing that they say." She looked at the ceiling, struggling with some memory. "It was not that they hurt me so much," she said, quite calm. "As you see, my limbs are all still in place. And they showed me the whip with metal ends, but used only the leather. It was... it was that they were always hurting me, so I could not rest from it or... or do anything. I never even had time to hate them."

  Then she laughed, astonishingly without bitterness or fear, but a pleasant and bell-like sound. "Ah, my. Like Ishtar I am come out of the pit. Maybe I will be a little wiser for it. Sit down, Captain, you look like something of wood, there to prop up the door. No, don't sit there—here."

  She offered a hand, and he took it. There was a linen bandage on her wrist, all day old and a little soiled, still smelling faintly of cold unguent. His own wrists were too toughened by leather bracers to have been marked in the short time he had been shackled. But she was not made for such uses.

  "Here we are again, where we were just a moment ago," she said. "Shall we try again? I was thanking you for releasing me."

  "What I should have said..." Was good night and fare you well, he thought, but said "... is that I am not a very successful savior."

  "Why? Even Galahad accepted ladies' favors for saving them." She tugged gently at his collar. "And he could not have carried so many scarves as that."

  "Say rather... what I rescue is often lost again." As she touched his cheek, he felt his nerves awaking, but knew that he could lose even that.

  "Oh. Then I should say that I am not a very successful lover, because what I have loved is all lost: my Edward, and kind Will Hastings... and Master Shore, who was to me what a candle in the window is." She looked past him, at the candle in the bedside holder, and its images danced in her liquid eyes.

  She said suddenly "They could not have broken me otherwise," and was at once far away from tears. "But they said my lovers were all dead, and I confessed it as I must, and in the lawyers' papers that was witchcraft." She looked at her toes. "Am I redeemed, Captain?"

  "The King has granted you a full pardon."

  "I do not mean a pardon at law. Am I redeemed, for my losses?" She looked him eye to eye. Her breath warmed his lips. "Are you redeemed, for yours?"

  She struggled to smile again, as someone moving a great weight. Then, with a quiet humor, she said "If we are neither to be redeemed, then there is only one solution. Promise me that you will not try to save me, Captain, and I will promise not to love you."

  "I... promise, my lady,"

  She did not draw back from him. "We have a truce, then?"

  "A truce?" Then he understood. "Yes, my lady."

  "Thank Lady Freya," she said. "I could not have been at war much longer."

  Her fingers encircled his unscarred wrists as he kissed her cropped hair.

  The warm spiced wine was halfway gone, and halt the candles in the room were put out. "What did Morton mean," Cynthia said, "when he asked about... you, and pain?"

  Anthony Woodville leaned forward in his chair, winecup in interlaced hands. "You aren't easily shocked, I think, Doctor "

  "I'll tell you when it happens," she said evenly. She supposed that he would not shock her. Disgust, perhaps. Disappoint, certainly.

  Rivers stood, turned his chair, sat down again facing away from her. He pulled a brooch, and his gown slipped down to drape over the chair's arms and back. Then he tugged open his shirt lacings and let that too slide down.

  She judged that the newest of the scars was at least five years old; some seemed far older. It was apparent that they had been quite deep cuts, but that was not the disturbing thing; mere enthusiasm could make the scourge bite deep. It was the regularity of the marks, precise in angle and spacing: the work had been done with care, with science. With love.

  "Someone... did this to you," she said, though nothing could have been more evident. She wished that she had not drunk so much.

  "It was something I had done to me."

  "But why?"

  "At first it was because of someone I killed," Rivers said. "Then it was worship, when I discovered those gods. But soon enough I discarded that, and it was done because it pleased me that it be done."

  "Why?" she said. "Why you?" And it was not shock, or disgust, or disappointment; it was despair, where she had not even been aware she had had any hope.

  "It is no longer my ruling passion," he said, and his shoulders drew tight, the lattice showing redly.

  "But still your.. .your..." She felt choked. "Would you ever have noticed me, if you had not seen me first with a knife in my hand?"

  Rivers gave a small, very tight groan. He pulled his clothing up to cover his shoulders, stood up, turned to face her. "You are a most well-favored woman, Doctor, and I hope I shall have the pleasure of your conversation many times after this. But I would not ask for anything more, knowing that you would doubt the reason." He went to the hallway door. "Especially when I would doubt it as well."

  His movements were relaxed, supremely dignified. She watched him go, thinking that she must do nothing, for if she forgave him this there would be nothing she would not forgive him.

  Or perhaps all it meant was that there was true forgiveness in her.

  She grasped her stick and pushed herself up from the chair. It would not do to go hobbling after him. "Anthony," she said, calmly, and he paused.

  She had been an expert witness many times in the Florentine courts, her services being especially desired in cases of rape. As the death penalty was not rare if the victim were noble, certainty was required: and she had found no sign more certain than the withdrawal from, the fear of love, and not merely of physical occupation.

  Now she needed to know how frightened she was.

  Anthony said "What would you have me say, Doctor Ricci? That roses have thorns? I am a better poet than that."

  "I am not English, but I have been told that the word of an English knight is an antidote to doubt."

  "Do you... pity me, madam?" The feeling was all forced out of his face, but she could hear the traces in his voice, knew that he had despaired too.

  She wondered how she could ever have confused this man with a fanatical little wretch in a Florentine apartment, when the difference between them was the difference between shame and glory.

  What did you want, Ricci? she thought. We're all damaged.

  "On earth we're all earth," she said, "and flesh must touch." Now she needed to touch, know if it was all right for her.

  He caused her some pain—she was old to be starting this, she knew, and the tissues were thickened, not to mention her hip— but at his sob and soft murmur she knew he had not meant it, and then she knew that it was all right, and then it was more than all right.

  Gregory von Bayern watched from his window as the lights of London went out. It was a good night, he thought, to be at peace with the world. His room was dark, except for a circle of white light thrown by the lamp on his worktable.

  In the light were some sketches, his bullet molds, a small pan of congealed lead over a cold spirit burner, and some tiny glass jars labeled in German, all around a span-long cylinder of wood, with a hole at one end and slots along its sides.
>
  He opened a drawer and took out his small metal gun, checked its load. Then he picked up the cylinder, pushed its end over the muzzle of the gun; the front blade sight slid in a key-way, and a quarter-turn locked the two parts together.

  Gregory thumbed a bit of sawdust from the cylinder, checked its vents for excess traces of glycerine and powdered metal. When a thing can only be done once, he thought, that is the time to do it perfectly.

  It would be, he thought, a sort of final triumph of German technology over Byzantine: the Eastern Empire had never mastered the channeling of high-temperature products that made German projectiles and infernal devices the best.

  The device on the end of his gun, when ignited by a gunshot, would according to design create a roughly egg-shaped zone, two yards high and one across, for eight seconds at the temperature of boiling iron. He wished the circumstances permitted a fire of longer duration, that he might vanish except for some lumps of metal... and his teeth, probably. Teeth were surprisingly refractory. He knew an alchemist in Westfalen who was trying to master a synthetic tooth coating.

  But the fire he had constructed was sufficient for himself.

  Gregory stepped to the center of the room, away from objects which might cause secondary fires. There had never been any thought in his mind of writing an explanatory letter. There was no explaining to them the taste of their blood in his mouth.

  He primed the gunlock, held the weapon close to his chest, pointed upward.

  His door opened. A man was standing there, dressed in Tower livery and holding a spear: Giles, the feeble-minded porter. He held out a large key of black iron.

  "Very well," Gregory said, and followed Giles, thrusting the gun into the belt of his gown. He wondered if the true nature of his damnation was that he should always be interrupted just at any moment when he had ceased to hate himself.

  Giles, and then Gregory, stopped in front of the cell door. From within there was a sound, long and wailing.

  Gregory knew very well that no ordinary scream could carry through that door. John Morton was no ordinary man, of course, but von Bayern did not believe in demons summoned from the Pit.

  He took the gun from his belt, turned the cylinder on the muzzle to unlock it, but did not take it off. He nodded to Giles, who put the key in the lock.

  As the door opened, the cry came again: then Gregory saw that it did come from Morton, but it was not a human sound.

  Cold intruded on Cynthia's warmth like the blade of a knife. She gave a small, shrill cry, and reached for Anthony. She found him stirring; the room was dark. Then the cold touched her again, fingers upon her shoulder.

  "I am sorry to do this, Doctor Ricci," Gregory von Bayern said from the darkness above her, "but you must follow me at once. It

  concerns the wizard Morton." He struck the candle.

  It took a time for the words to make sense. Anthony Woodville was listening, blanket drawn up to cover his back. Finally Cynthia said "Will he confess where Hywel is?"

  "No, Cynthia, I do not believe he will." There was a maddening nothingness in his voice.

  "Is he sick, then?"

  "For his sake, Doctor, I hope that he is dying."

  She dressed in a shift, robe, and slippers, Anthony in a heavy gown; halfway to the cells, he gave her a scarf to cover her hair.

  Giles the porter stood, dull as always, outside the cell: the door was open wide, and she thought that Morton must surely have tricked them all, cast a glamour of sickness and walked from the Tower laughing at them. But that was not the case.

  "Burning God," Rivers said, and tried to hold Cynthia back. "Don't go in there! What if it's... catching?"

  She went past his arm. "This isn't a disease," she said. "Get the hall lantern in here." She reached out to touch the twisting, howling thing on the floor. "This bone's shooting spurs like a hedgehog, and this one... just seems to have gone... liquid." She felt bile in her throat. "What in the Lady's name?"

  Rivers seized the partizan from Giles, brought its butt down on a small green blob that was crawling away from Morton, all on its own, trailing gall. Rivers reversed the spear, and aimed its point at the Morton-lump.

  Gregory returned, leading Dimitrios and a woman, apparently also taken in the act.

  "Who is it?" the woman said.

  "John Morton, the Holborn wizard," Rivers said. "Edward's killer."

  The woman pressed forward, enough for a good full look: there was an awful strain in her face. Then she said "No one could deserve this," and turned away.

  Then, from the corridor, she cried out.

  Giles the porter walked past her, past Dimitrios and Rivers, casting his shadow across the Morton-thing on the floor.

  His hose were torn—or rather, they were tearing, ripping seams at his knees. A line of already loose stitching at his shoulder popped completely. He staggered against the wall of the cell, half sitting, half collapsing, and reached down to pull off his shoes with hands that seemed to have no knuckles. Freed, his toes grew another inch, poking through his hose.

  Something like chicken fat fell from his face, and tufts of spiky white hair. He put his face in his long hands, tilted it upward, running his fingers over his piebald scalp. He sighed and coughed, a little blood showing on his lips.

  Hywel Peredur rested one eye and one dark socket on the people gathered in the cell.

  "Oh, it's good to see you all," he said, in not much more than a whisper, "see you and know all your names again."

  Morton's body was trembling now, and he no longer cried out. Cynthia said "Hywel... you didn't do this... surely not?"

  "He did it to himself," Hywel said. "Sixty years of magic lies there, all caught up to its worker." He shook his head. "But in a way it is my doing. He was worried; he tried to check on me with his mind... and I made him let me out." He shook his head. "That's a dangerous event."

  Cynthia reached to the lump again. "His heart's still beating."

  "You can't save him. Not even as that ruin... and Mistress Shore is right: no one could deserve to live as that." Hywel crawled forward, bent over Morton. "Will you rest now, John? There won't be any pain. Nor curses, eh, John?"

  Morton's face slouched over, eyes like grapes in oatmeal.

  A twisting wind whirled up dust in the room. Cynthia was knocked on her side, crying out at the pain in her hip. Hywel was grasping at the air, small lights flickering around his hands. The wind pushed into the door, buffeting the others; Dimi grasped Jane Shore to keep her steady. Then the vortex was gone, up the hall, funneling up the stairs.

  "It was so cold," Cynthia said, as Anthony helped her stand. Hywel was still crouching, looking at the ceiling. "It was a death," he said, distantly. "Only one, but a strong one."

  "Whose?" Dimitrios said.

  Hywel raised his hands. "I can't catch it!" Gregory took a step, gripped Hywel's left hand in his own, held out his other hand. Dimi took it. Jane Shore joined the chain, then Rivers, then Cynthia, and back to Hywel.

  Cynthia felt a tingling in her hands, almost painful; then something was being sucked up from within her, like life itself draining. She could feel her great vessels like lines of fire within her.

  "Sion, detuin," Hywel shouted, "what's it for?"

  And then there was quiet in Cynthia's mind, and body; she still held hands, knowing she would fall if she did not.

  She knew—and, as a story around the circle, saw they all knew—

  "Anthony," Hywel said, "will you come with me? We've known him longest."

  "Of course, Peredur."

  "I'm his man," Dimitrios said.

  Hywel said gently, "Not for this, Dimi. It doesn't want a warrior- brother to tell a man his only son has died."

  As they went from the room, Jane Shore took Dimi's arm firmly in her own, said "He'll need you soon enough." Dimitrios nodded. Jane pointed toward the cell, said "What about... that?"

  Cynthia saw Gregory take his small gun from his belt; there was an object fixed to its muzzle. "I wil
l attend to it," he said, and when she was almost out of hearing, she heard "Mehr Arbeit fur den Todesmann."

  PART FIVE

  Ends

  of the

  Game

  But shall we wear these honors for a day ?

  Or shall they last, and we rejoice in them?

  —ACT IV, SCENE 2

  Chapter Thirteen

  DRAGON

  FEBRUARY was melting into March, but the atmosphere in London was still deep winter: Coronation had promised to heal the country, but now the King was grieving and the land was wounded.

  Richard sat in his chair after the councillors had departed, plain gold crown straight on his forehead, rolling a scepter over in his hands.

  Dimitrios said "My lord, I don't think they're as disaffected as they may sound. But they want leading."

  "A leader has to have someplace to take his followers," Richard said dully. "And something to offer them once they arrive. I have no heir. And we've used up everyone else, haven't we? My father, all my brothers and all their sons... even the desperate claimants like Harry Buckingham."

  Richard Ratcliffe came into the chamber, a rolled paper tight in his hand. "We may have something, Your Grace. There's been a man spreading sedition—"

  Richard held out his hand for the paper, unrolled and read it. It was a printed broadsheet, done in crooked, hand-whittled type on a basement press. Dimi read:

  When Northern men lay England waste

  Her noble Tree of Kings erased

  Her wise Lords carpentered in Haste—

  When Lyons are by Boars displaced

  Soon comes dies irae!

  Richard handed the sheet back. '"Carpentered in Haste.' Witty, too. What of it?"

  "My lord, we found the man who printed them, a William Colyngbourne."

  "I'll endow him a chair of letters at Cambridge."

  "Richard, please listen. In Colyngbourne's house we found type half-cut for more broadsides, proclaiming a Henry Tydder as rightful King of England. And we found these."