by Mike Ashley
“Hey, Da, is they any bread and cheese more?” he asked.
“No, they isn’t, Buck. Happen thee’ll get they dinner soon enough.”
The Master of the Buckhounds said that he was going to see could he find some berries or a musk-room and sauntered off into the thicket. His sire nudged the guest. “Gone to play with himself, I’ll be bound,” said he.
“Why don’t ’ee marry ’im off?” asked the King of Bertland, promptly. “There’s our Rose, has her hope chest all filled and still as chaste as the day the wise woman slapped her newborn bottom, ten year ago last Saturnalia, eh?”
The King of the Alves grunted moodily. “Hasn’t I sudggestered this to his dam?” he asked, rhetorically. “ ‘Here’s Bert come for to marry off his datter,’ says I, ‘for thee doesn’t think there’s such a shortage o’ rabbiting in Bertland he have to come here for it, whatever the formalities of it may be. And Princess Rose be of full age and can give thee a hand in the kitching,’ says I. But, no, says she. For why? Buck haven’t gone on no quest nor haven’t served no squire time at the High King’s court and ten-year-old is too old-fashioned young and he be but a boy hisself and she don’t need no hand in the kitching and if I doesn’t like the way me victuals be served, well, I can go and eat beans with the thralls, says she.
“—Well, do she natter that Buck have pimples, twill serve she right, say I. Best be getten back. Ar, these damp edgerows will give me the rheum in me ips, so we sit ere more, eh?”
He hefted his sack of hares and they started back. The King of Bertland gestured to the donjeon-keep, where a thin smoke indicated the warder was cooking his evening gruel. “As yer ransomed off King Baldwin’s heir as got tooken in the humane man-trap last winter what time e sought to unt the tusky boar?”
The walls of Alftown came into sight, with the same three breeches and a rent which characterized the walls of every castle and capital town as insisted on by Wilfredoric Conqueror, the late great-uncle of the last High King but one. Since that time, Alfish (or Alvish, as some had it) royalty had been a-dwelling in a Big House, which was contained behind a stout stockade: this, too, was customary.
“What, didn’t I notify you about that, Bert?” the Alf-king asked, with a slightly elaborate air of surprise. “Ah, many’s the good joke and jest we’ve had about that in the fambly, ‘Da has tooken King Baldy’s hair, harharharhar!’ Yus, the old man finally paid up, three mimworms and a dragon’s egg. ‘Mustn’t call him King Baldy now he’s got his heir back, horhorhorhor!’ Ah, what’s life wiffart larfter? Or, looking hat it another way, wiffart hhonor: we was meaning to surprise you, Bert, afore you left, by putten them mimworms and that dragon’s hegg hinto a suitable container wif a nice red ribbon and say, ‘Ere you be, King o’ Bertland, hand be pleased to haccept this as your winnings for that time we played forfeits last time we played it.’ Surprise yer, yer see. But now yer’ve spoiled that helement of it; ah, well, must take the bitter wiv the sweet.”
That night after dinner the three mimworms and the dragon’s egg were lifted out from the royal hidey-hole and displayed for the last time at Alf High-Table before being taken off to their new home. Princess Pearl and Princess Ruby gave over their broidered-work, and young Buck (he was officially Prince Rufus but was never so-called) stopped feeding scruffles to his bird and dog – a rather mangy-looking mongrel with clipped claws – and Queen Clara came back out of the kitchen.
“Well, this is my last chance, I expect,” said Princess Pearl, a stout good-humored young girl, with rather large feet. “Da, give us they ring.”
“Ar, this time, our Pearl, happen thee’ll have luck,” her sire said, indulgently; and he took off his finger the Great Sigil-Stone Signet-Ring of the Realm, which he occasionally affixed to dog licenses and the minutes of the local wardmotes, and handed it to her. Whilest the elders chuckled indulgently and her brother snorted and her baby sister looked on with considerable envy, the elder princess began to make the first mystic sign – and then, breaking off, said, “Well, now, and since it is the last chance, do thee do it for me, our Ruby, as I’ve ad no luck a-doin it for meself so far—”
Princess Ruby clapped her hands. “Oh, may I do it, oh, please, please, our Pearl? Oh, you are good to me! Ta ever so!” and she began the ancient game with her cheeks glowing with delight and expectation:
Mimworm dim, mimworm bright,
Make the wish I wish tonight:
By dragon egg and royal king,
Send now for spouse the son of a king!
The childish voice and gruff chuckles were suddenly all drowned out by screams, shouts, cries of astonishment, and young Buck’s anguished wail; for where his bird had been, safely jessed, there suddenly appeared a young man as naked as the day of his birth.
Fortunately the table had already been cleared, and, nakedness not ever having been as fashionable in East Brythonia (the largest island in the Black Sea) as it had been in parts farther south and west, the young man was soon rendered as decent as the second-best tablecloth could make him.
“Our Pearl’s husband! Our Pearl’s husband! See, I did do it right, look! Our Mum and our Da, look!” and Princess Ruby clapped her hands together. King Alf and King Bert sat staring and muttering . . . perhaps charms, or countercharms . . . Buck, with tears in his eyes, demanded his bird back, but without much in his tone to indicate that he held high hopes . . . Princess Pearl had turned and remained a bright, bright red . . . and Queen Clara stood with her hands on her hips and her lips pressed together and a face – as her younger daughter put it later: “O Lor! Wasn’t Mum’s face a study!”
Study or no, Queen Clara said now, “Well, and pleased to meet this young man, I’m sure, but it seems to me there’s more to this than meets the heye. Our Pearl is still young for all she’s growed hup into a fine young ’oman, and I don’t know as I’m all that keen on her marrying someone as we knows nuffink abahrt, hexcept that he use ter be a bird; look at that there Ellen of Troy whose dad was a swan, Leda was er mum’s name; what sort of ome life d’you think she could of ad, no better than they should be the two of them, mother and daughter – what! Alfland! Yer as some’at to say, as yer!” she turned fiercely on her king, who had indeed been mumbling something about live and let live, and it takes all kinds, and seems a gormly young man; “Ah, and if another Trojan War is ter start, needn’t think to take Buck halong and—”
But she had gone too far.
“Nah then, nah then, Queen Clara,” said her king. “Seems to me yer’ve gotten things fair muddled, that ’ere Trojing War come abaht acause the lady herself ad more nor one usband, an’ our Pearl asn’t – leastways not as I knows of. First yer didn’t want Buck to get married, nah yer wants our Pearl ter stay at ome. I dessay, when it come our Ruby’s time, yer’ll ave some’at to say bout that, too. Jer want me line, the royal line-age o’ the Kings of Alfland, as as come down from King Deucalion’s days, ter die aht haltergether?” And to this the queen had no word to utter, or, at least, none she thought it prudent to; so her husband turned to the young man clad in the second-best tablecloth (the best, of course, always being saved for the lustral Visitations of the High King himself) – and rather well did he look in it, too – and said, “Sir, we bids yer welcome to this ere Igh Table, which it’s mine, King Earwig of Alfland is me style and title, not but what I mightn’t ave another, nottersay other ones, if so be I ad me entitles and me right. Ah, ad not the King o’ the Norf, Arald Ardnose, slain Earl Oscaric the Ostrogoth at Slowstings, thus allowing Juke Wilfred of Southmandy to hobtain more than a mere foot’old, as yer might call it, this ud be a united kingdom today instead of a mere patch’ork quilt of petty kingdomses. Give us an account of yerself, young man, as yer hobliged to do hanyway according to the lore.”
And at once proceeded to spoil the effect of this strict summons by saying to his royal guest, “Pour us a drain o’ malt and one for his young sprig, wonthcher, Bert,” and handed the mug to the young sprig with his own hands and the words, “Er
e’s what made the deacon dance, so send it down the red road, brother, and settle the dust.”
They watched the ale go rippling down the newcomer’s throat, watched him smack his lips. Red glows danced upon the fire-pit hearth, now and then illuminating the path of the black smoke all the way up to the pitchy rafters where generations of other smokes had left their soots and stains. And then, just as they were wondering whether the young man had a tongue or whether he peradventure spoke another than the one in which he had been addressed, he opened his comely red lips and spoke.
“Your Royal Grace and Highnesses,” he said, “and Prince and Princesses, greetings.”
“Greetings,” they all said, in unison, including, to her own pleased surprise, Queen Clara, who even removed her hands from under the apron embroidered with the golden crowns, where she had been clasping them tightly, and sat down, saying that the young man spoke real well and was easily seen to have been well brought hup, whatsoever e ad been a bird: but there, we can’t always elp what do befall us in this vale of tears.
“To give an account of myself,” the young man went on, after no more than a slight pause, “would be well lengthy, if complete. Perhaps it might suffice for now for me to say that as I was on the road running north and east out of Chiringirium in the Middle, or Central, Roman Empire, I was by means of a spell cast by a benevolent sorcerer, transformed into a falcon in order that I might be saved from a much worse fate; that wilst in the form of that same bird I was taken in a snare and manned by one trained in that art, by him sold or exchanged for three whippets and a brace of woodcock to a trader out of Tartary by way of the Crimea; and by him disposed of to a wandering merchant, who in turn made me over to this young prince here for two silver pennies and a great piece of gammon. I must say that this is very good ale,” he said, enthusiastically. “The Romans don’t make good ale, you know, it’s all wine with them. My old dadda used to tell me, ‘Perry, my boy, clean barrels and good malt make clean good ale . . .’ ”
And, as he recalled the very tone of his father’s voice and the very smell of his favorite old cloak, and realized that he would never see him more, a single tear rolled unbidden from the young man’s eye and down the down of his cheek and was lost in the tangle of his soft young beard, though not lost to the observation of all present. Buck snuffled, Ruby climbed up in the young man’s lap and placed her slender arms round his neck, Queen Clara blew her nose into her gold-embroidered apron, King Bert cleared his throat, and King Alf-Earwig brushed his own eyes with his sleeve.
“Your da told yer that, eh?” he said, after a moment. “Well, he told yer right and true— What, call him dadda, do ’ee? Why, yer must be one a them Lower Europeans, then, for I’ve eard it’s their way o’ speech. What’s is name, then – and what’s yours, for that matter?”
Princess Pearl, speaking for the first time since giving the ring to her small sister, said, “Why, Da, haven’t he told us that? His name is Perry.” And then she blushed an even brighter red than ever.
“Ah, he have, our Pearl. I’ll be forgetting my own name next. Changed into a falcon-bird and then changed back again, eh? Mind them mimworms and that ’ere dragon hegg, Bert; keep em safe locked hup, for where there be magic there be mischief—But what’s yer guvnor’s name, young Perry?”
Young Perry had had time to think. Princess Pearl was to all appearances an honest young woman and no doubt skilled in the art of spindle and distaff and broider-sticking, as befitted the daughter of a petty king; and as befitted one, she was passing eager and ready for marriage to the son of another such. But Perry had no present mind to be that son. Elliptically he answered with another question. “Have you heard of Sapodilla?”
Brows were knit, heads were scratched. Elliptics is a game at which more than one can play. “That be where you’re from, then?” replied King Alf.
The answer, such as it was, was reassuring. He felt he might safely reveal a bit more without revealing too much more. “My full name, then, is Peregrine the son of Paladrine, and I am from Sapodilla and it is in Lower Europe. And my father sent me to find my older brother, Austin, who looks like me, but blond.”— This was stretching the truth but little. Eagerness rising in him at the thought, he asked, “Have any of you seen such a man?”
King Bert took the answer upon himself. “Mayhap such a bird is what ee should better be a-hasking for, horhorhor!” he said. And then an enormous yawn lifted his equally enormous mustache.
Someone poked Perry in the side with a sharp stick. He did not exactly open his eyes and sit up, there on the heap of sheepskin and blanketure nigh the still hot heap of coals in the great hall; for somehow he knew that he was sleeping. This is often the prelude to awakening, but neither did he awake. He continued to lie there and to sleep, though aware of the poke and faintly wondering about it. And then it came again, and a bit more peremptory, and so he turned his mind’s eye to it, and before his mind’s eye he saw the form and figure of a man with a rather sharp face, and this one said to him, “Now, attend, and don’t slumber off again, or I’ll fetch you back, and perhaps a trifle less pleasantly; you are new to this island, and none come here new without my knowing it, and yet I did not know it. Attend, therefore, and explain.”
And Peregrine heard himself saying, in a voice rather like the buzzing of bees (and he complimented himself, in his dream, for speaking thus, for it seemed to him at that time and in that state that this was the appropriate way for him to be speaking). “Well, and well do I now know that I have passed through either the Gate of Horn or the Gate of Ivory, but which one I know not, do you see?”
“None of that, now, that is not my concern: explain, explain, explain; what do you here and how came you here, to this place, called ‘the largest island in the Black Sea’, though not truly an island . . . and, for that matter, perhaps not even truly in the Black Sea . . . Explain. Last summons.”
Perry sensed that no more prevarications were in order. “I came here, then, sir, in the form of an hawk or falcon, to which state I was reduced by white witchery; and by white witchery was I restored to own my natural manhood after arriving.”
The sharp eyes scanned him. The sharp mouth pursed itself in more than mere words. “Well explained, and honestly. So. I have more to do, and many cares, and I think you need not be one of them. For now I shall leave you, but know that from time to time I shall check and attend to your presence and your movements and your doings. Sleep!”
Again the stick touched him, but now it was more like a caress, and the rough, stiff fleece and harsh blankets felt as smooth to his naked skin as silks and downs.
He awoke again, and properly this time, to see the grey dawnlight touched with pink. A thrall was blowing lustily upon the ember with a hollowed tube of wood and laying fresh fagots of wood upon it. An even lustier rumble of snores came from the adjacent heap of covers, whence protruded a pair of hairy feet belonging, presumably, to the King of Bertland. And crouching by his own side was Buck.
Who said, “Hi.”
“Hi,” said Perry, sitting up.
“You used to be a peregrine falcon and now you’re a peregrine man?” the younger boy asked.
“Yes. But don’t forget that I was a peregrine man before becoming a falcon. And let me thank you for the care and affection which you gave me when I was your hawk, Buck. I will try to replace myself . . . or replace the bird you’ve lost, but as I don’t know just when I can or how, even, best I make no promise.”
At this point the day got officially underway at Alfland Big House, and there entered the king himself, followed by the Lord High Great Steward, aged eight (who, having ignominiously failed his apprenticeship as kitchenboy by forgetting to turn the spit and allowing a pair of pullets to burn, had been demoted), carrying hot water and towels; the soft-soap, in a battered silver basin, being born by King Alf. He also bore an ostrich feather which had seen better days, and with this he ceremoniously tickled the feet of King Bert, whose snores ceased abruptly. The hot water
and towels were set on a bench and the burnished tray set up in a convenient niche to serve as mirror. King Bert grunted greetings, took his sickle-shaped razor out of his ditty bag, and, seizing one wing of his mustache and pulling the adjacent skin out, began to shave.
“Buck,” said King of the Alves, “yer mum wants yer. Nar then, young Perry,” he said, “what I wants ter know is this: Haccording to the charm as our Ruby’s been and done unto yer, yer supposed to be the son of a king. Sometimes magic gets muddled, has we all knows, take for hinstance that time the Conqueror e says to iz wizard, ‘Conjur me up the ghost of Caesar,’ not specifying which Caesar e meant but hassuming e’d ave great Caesar’s ghost hand no hother, which e adn’t; the resultant confusion we needn’t go hinter. However, ‘Bring now for spouse the son of a king,’ says the charm, doesn’t say which king, do it, but meantersay: His you hor hisn’t you, a fair question, lad, give us a fair hanswer.”
This Peregrine felt the man was entitled to, but he was by no means delighted with the implications. “In a manner of speaking, Sir King,” he said, wiggling slightly – and then, reflecting that the truth is more often the best than not, he added, “I am my father’s youngest bastard son, and he has three heirs male of his body lawfully begotten.”
King Alf digested this. It could almost be seen going down. “Well, then, we can homit Prince Peregrine, can we. Mmmm. Which means, Queen Pearl, we needn’t look forrert to that, neither. Er dowery ud be smaller, there’s a saving, right there. Nor she needn’t move far away, Lower Europe, meantersay, might’s well be Numidia for all the chance us’d ever get to visit. As a one or two by-blows meself. Fust one, wasn’t never sure was it by me or was it by a peddler as’d been by awking plaice; lad turned fifteen, stole a fishing smack one night and run wif it: I crossed is name horf the Royal Genealogical Chart hand ad a scribe write Denounciated hand Renounciated hafter it. Tother un was the spit and image of me Huncle Percy, long afore deceased; but this lad went to the bad just like tother one, hexcept e become a physician specializing in the infirmities of women, as yer might say, ope yer own da as ad better luck . . .”