The Dragon Throne

by Michael Cadnum

  As long as he lived, it was not the scattered, panicked flight of the pikemen that Edmund would remember with magical clarity. His memory would not linger over the image of the dead wolfhound sprawling in the muddy, trampled street. Or the way Ester’s horse tossed and pawed, unnerved at the sight of fresh death.

  He would treasure the picture of Hubert, holding Galena by one hand and leaping—the two of them bounding—dancing in the afternoon sunlight.

  Their happiness was perfect all through the banquet, goose stuffed with duckling, and spiced tripe pie.

  Sir Maurice had much to tell. Their Orsino hostage Tomasso had been exchanged for the food and wine they had been enjoying these many months, and a good quantity of gold into the bargain, and yet skirmishes and assaults on servants had been common.

  Tomasso’s personal retinue was stronger than ever, and the noble scion’s power had increased. Even now, safe and happy as they were, Sir Maurice’s walls were surrounded by Tomasso’s footmen. “He’s a young man of honor,” said Sir Maurice. “But like many men of wealth, he finds matters of life and death little more than rough sport.”

  That very day Sir Maurice had at last offered himself as hostage, to ensure his daughter’s safe passage home to England. “Tomasso would see that I was well wined,” said the banneret, “and plied with conversation. I would have been a caged falcon, but happy enough.”

  Maurice had much to learn, too—about Prince John’s growing power, and the way Queen Eleanor kept him carefully in check. And Sir Maurice gave a heavy sigh when he learned of Sir Jean’s routiers, and the big knight’s death.

  “Prince John, I believe, will not be pleased to see all of you back again,” said Sir Maurice with a rueful smile.

  “He will do us no more harm,” insisted Nigel. “We’re the king’s men, and Queen Eleanor’s, too, and John for all his bad blood will not dare kill us on English soil—especially if we return with you, Sir Maurice, with your honors and good name.”

  Sir Maurice gave a warmhearted laugh. “You understand the royal brothers and their mother well,” said the banneret. “I do believe, Sir Nigel, that Heaven may grant you a future as a man of sound advice.”

  Sir Nigel gave a pleased smile, but said, “I’ll be grateful simply to see English rain again, and a side of English mutton.”

  “As Heaven wills it,” responded Maurice. “But first let us find out how much the Orsino family will demand for our safe passage out of Rome.”

  When the yellow-sleeved messenger arrived, Edmund felt the evening sour.

  Sir Maurice heard the message and shook his head.

  “The Orsino family,” announced Sir Maurice to his guests, “will give us safe conduct out of the city providing we pay them one thousand gold marks.”

  The price was absurdly, brutally high. Conrad of Saxe himself had been worth only fifty marks—and that from the purse of a fellow Saxon.

  “We will fight our way out,” said Rannulf.

  “I do believe you will find,” said Sir Maurice, “that once you are here, it is not so easy to escape.”

  “What alternative do they propose?” asked Edmund.

  “A battle between champions,” said Sir Maurice.

  The gathering fell silent.

  “Our single best fighter,” Sir Maurice continued, “against their champion Othon de—what is he called?”

  Edmund stood.

  Nigel buried his face in his hands, and Rannulf gave a great sigh.

  “With God as my witness—” began Edmund.

  “Sit down, dear Edmund,” said Nigel gently.

  “Who else should do the fighting, Sir Nigel?” protested Edmund. “Heaven has forestalled Rannulf’s healing, and I’ll not suffer Hubert to risk his life for mine again.”

  The great house of the banneret Sir Maurice was a warren of halls and side rooms, and Ester had to search to find Edmund.

  She discovered him at last, sitting with Hubert in the armorer’s chambers, surrounded by samples of fighting gloves. Spiked gauntlets and supple riding gloves, full-sleeved iron chain mail and iron-braced grips. The items of apparel looked so much like severed hands that she hesitated for a moment to enter the room.

  “Dog skin, bull hide, or a chain-mail mitten,” said Edmund with a laugh. “Which would you prefer, my lady?”

  “Or this?” said Hubert, holding up a gauntlet of scale work, an armored grip so heavily metalled it clanked as the knight shook it.

  “I have a sacred thing,” she said. She corrected herself, saying, “A holy object. A relic that may help us all.”

  Much later that night there was a tap on the brass-hinged door to Sir Maurice’s chamber.

  Sir Nigel and Sir Rannulf were at a table with Sir Maurice, and although each man had a silver cup of wine, no one was drinking.

  A servant murmured in Sir Maurice’s ear, and the envoy gave a nod.

  “I have seen how such jousts can conclude, gentlemen,” said Ester when she had joined the three veteran knights, Edmund beside her. “There will be fighting as the crowd joins in, and none of us will ever see our homes again.”

  The three knights were standing, showing respect to the young lady, but each wore an expression of anxious doubt.

  “You may be right, Lady Ester,” said Nigel.

  “Only a holy sign,” said the young woman, “or a sacred relic will move such a crowd to peace.”

  “Good Ester, I have seen a Roman crowd,” said Sir Maurice, “in drunken riot on Easter Day.”

  “Gentle knights,” said Ester, “see what Queen Eleanor gave me to protect all of us from harm.”

  She held out her hand.

  An oblong frame depicted the image of Saint George slaying the twisting dragon. The monster’s tail wound all the way around the inset rock crystal, and within the transparent stone a bright, thorn-shaped object gleamed in radiant colors as the candlelight played upon it.

  “I have heard the queen had such a noble relic,” breathed Nigel, “and kept it well-hidden.”

  “What is it?” asked Rannulf.

  “My father says it is a shard of opal-stone, and nothing more,” said Ester. “But some say it is the claw of the dragon, slain by Saint George.”

  “Is it indeed?” asked Sir Maurice. He did not reach out to touch it—even a man of fine-spun common sense was impressed by such relics.

  Only Rannulf would take it from Ester’s hand. Dragons, griffins, narwhals, and other such creatures were little understood. If Rannulf were confronted with one, he imagined that he would find it no more fearful than many humans.

  “There is a pebble of bone in here, as well,” said the veteran knight.

  “It is from the fighting hand,” said Ester, “of the dragon-slayer.”

  Rannulf met her gaze wonderingly. He set the reliquary down firmly on the table, and took a step back. He knelt, joined by his fellow knights, including Sir Maurice, as though the fighting saint himself had entered the room.

  “You received this from Queen Eleanor, Lady Ester?” inquired Sir Maurice when he was on his feet again.

  “Indeed I did, Sir Maurice,” said Ester. “And I believe that this holy relic can win us passage back home to my father and my lady queen.”

  The other men were still kneeling prayerfully, even as Sir Maurice poured a cup of wine and offered it to Ester.

  “God help us,” said Sir Maurice, speaking as though to the shivering candlelight. “We may just possibly see England again.”

  41

  ROME WAS EVERY BIT THE CITY OF HOLY wonders, as Ester had dreamed.

  Accompanied by Edmund and squire Wowen, along with a band of well-armed servants, she prayed at the Church of Santa Sabina, thanking Heaven for the recovered health of her father, and asking for the repose of her mother’s soul. She joyed at the sight of the Colosseum, where Christian martyrs had been killed under the pagan emperors of ancient times, and she marveled at the great castle of Saint Michael across the Tiber River, a citadel greater in girth and height
than the Tower of London.

  But she could not help noticing the haughty eyes of the Orsino hirelings, and the sauntering manner of such men as they called to one another down the long, shadowy streets. And the guarded, exasperated glances of fruit sellers and fishmongers, and the fact that if an Orsino servant stole a smoked eel from a basket, no one joined the fish seller’s wife in chasing the laughing youth.

  Many windows in Rome remained heavily shuttered, bolted against trouble.

  Galena proved a worthy companion, gentle of voice and manner, and quick to point out the easiest way back home—and the safest. No man or woman of note went out without a band of armed men.

  This gave Rome the quality of being always on parade, the oil-cured armor and tink-a-chink of chain mail adding a festive air to the morning market. But the holy city was plainly a town ready for trouble, too many men testing the edge of their battle-axes against their gloved thumbs. Galena pointed out the kingfisher-blue livery of the Nero family, and the jaunty scarlet of the Colonna servants, and Ester had seen enough of life to recognize unhappiness in the smiles of the men and women of Rome, waiting for this era of Orsino insolence to pass.

  Ester tried to believe that her own peaceful interlude would stretch on forever, warm autumn afternoons beside the rosemary and the late-season roses on Sir Maurice’s roof garden. Edmund was so often eager to tell her about some new wonder he had seen—an albino goat, or a Nubian giant from the Nile. One afternoon he brought her the soft fur of an unborn lamb, traded by caravans, he reported excitedly, all the way from Persia.

  It was his enthusiasm she loved more than anything else, his excitement at the sight of a jackdaw chasing a hawk from a church tower, his smile when a wine seller broke into song. She tried to promise herself she would never spend a day away from the sturdy knight, as though she did not know all the while the great danger he was soon to face.

  But it was only a week, no longer, while the preparations were made, a site chosen on the beach near the old port of Ostia—even Orsino wishes could not offset the church’s edict against jousts within a city’s walls.

  Ester and Ida stitched, their silk-shot needles kissing their thimbles, working by daylight, and by the oil lamps of evening. They were preparing their sacred banner, and they intended it to dazzle.

  And to surprise.

  Galena and her servants brought them bolts of silk, green and scarlet, rare and expensive cloth that whispered as the shears cut it through.

  Ester drew a pattern with a wedge of wax, outlining the shapes. She sewed with haste, but never had her needle done such cunning work.

  It look long hours.

  “I do get right weary,” said Ida. Then, at a glance from Ester, she sat up straight and blinked. “But not too weary, by my faith.”

  One evening Wowen Wight was dressed in the leopard-emblem livery of King Richard and recited his announcement, practicing as Ester and Edmund and all the rest looked on.

  Wowen’s accents were those of Nottingham, but his words were the universal courtly Frankish of couriers and knights, the language spoken, in one form or another, from Paris to Sicily, wherever ballads were sung and swords drawn.

  “Responding to the Orsino challenge, Edmund Strongarm, by the grace of God, Crusader and knight of King Richard and Prince John—” Wowen stopped.

  “What’s wrong, Wowen?” asked Edmund.

  The young squire replied, “Those words will never sound like music, my lords.”

  “It sounds entirely proper,” said Nigel. “Prince John raised good Edmund to knighthood, after all.”

  “My lords,” protested Wowen, “why mention the prince?”

  “Go, then, and say it however you will,” said Edmund. “But tell Othon de Balfleur to be at the water’s edge by noon.”

  42

  EDMUND WAS FIRMLY PERCHED ON HIS spirited new horse, a heavy fighting mount called Pigmeo—“Pygmy.”

  This was an ironic name, since the stallion was heavy, big-headed, and the young knight felt dangerously far from the ground. Travel-worn Surefoot was stabled safely, eating sweet grass and getting fat. Edmund missed him now.

  Pigmeo tossed his massive head as Rannulf seized the bridle. The horse quieted for an instant at the seasoned knight’s touch.

  Edmund had decided to fight without gloves, bare-handed, following Rannulf’s advice. The weathered knight reassured Edmund now, “You’ll grip the sword the better for it, Edmund.”

  Rannulf believed that Edmund was still green as a swordsman, but as strong as any fighter the veteran had ever seen. Some artful word or blessing was in order, but Rannulf knew only life and its opposite.

  “Edmund, if Othon hurts you—” began Rannulf.

  Slays you, he meant, but it was best not to put a fear into words. “If he unseams you in the least—” Strong feeling broke his voice.

  On the landward side of the jousting site, folk were still arriving, sellers of smoked fish and hot, highly seasoned pies calling their wares. The entire city of Rome seemed to have come out to the seashore, crowding the long sloping beach not far from the mouth of the river Tiber. And they came ready for trouble, draymen and bakers armed with cudgels, scarlet-clad Colonna sympathizers with swords at their belts. The Nero faction was well-represented, too, outfitted in blue and bristling with dirks, daggers, and broadswords, each family ready to skirmish if the day’s fight boiled over into a melee.

  Tomasso Orsino sat under a bright blue canopy. The nobleman would be the final arbiter of the day’s events. If Tomasso felt satisfied that honor had been fulfilled, Edmund and his companions would be free to embark. As Edmund caught his eye, the yellow-mantled aristocrat gave a handsome smile, and lifted a hand bejeweled with an amber ring.

  Edmund gave a bow and worked hard to force every fear from his heart. A tantalizing presence, the great vessel Santa Monica rolled with the soft swells offshore. The ship was due to sail as soon as the joust was finished—if Edmund was victorious. If the saints—and Tomasso Orsino—willed it, day’s end would see Edmund and his companions happily stowed on this prosperous ship. Boats along the waterline were guarded by men Sir Maurice had paid well, and the way to safety was so close that Edmund felt the cruelty of his own hopefulness.

  He thrust the thought of a well-provisioned, short sea voyage with Ester by his side entirely out of his mind. Edmund wanted to pray yet again, and he wanted to press his lips against Ester’s once more.

  And he wished he could express his gratitude to Nigel and Rannulf, and vanquish the look of intense concern in the eyes of the two experienced knights. He raised a hand to Hubert, who watched white-faced from a distance, putting on a brave smile. Galena and Sir Maurice looked on nearby, anxiously hopeful that they would be able to leave Italian soil.

  Blessed by Holy Communion, his knees still sandy from having knelt before the priest, Edmund wanted to sing out that if he died today, he bore no malice toward any man. It was proper to say such a thing before legal combat, but Othon was in haste, already hefting the jousting lance, helmeted and waving his squire away, well before the crowd had fully arrived.

  Noon was barely upon them. Too quick, Edmund wanted to protest.

  There should have been more ceremony, more time while the banner of Saint George that Ester and Ida had made could be brought to the fore of the crowd. It was nowhere to be seen yet, although Edmund had heard it described—a silk standard topped by the sacred relic, firmly fastened with wrought gold wire.

  Surely Ester would not be late. Indeed, she was not late at all—it was Othon who was too early, waving his servants back as he raced his horse back and forth, splashing salt foam.

  Edmund wanted to call out before the world, “I die with peace in my heart.”

  But Edmund ran through his mind the names of lively folk who had died in recent seasons. Otto, Edmund’s former master, a good-hearted moneyer but none too honest. Osbert the servant, whose loyalty and desire to serve were matched by his powers as a thief. Edmund recalled the irrepr
essible squire Miles, with his bawdy songs, and the brave steed Winter Star, slain in the battle of Arsuf.

  And the hostages from Acre, some two thousand innocent men, women, and children, put to the sword at King Richard’s command.

  The young knight did not want to take Sir Othon’s life.

  But the heavily furnished Othon had finished adjusting his armor. He sported more iron than Edmund—with high chain-mail sleeves attached to his spiked gauntlets, and uncommon plate armor protecting his front and back.

  No wonder he was such a man killer, Edmund thought, if he started lancing his opponents while their helmets were barely set. Edmund felt the wisdom of Rannulf’s advice—too much armor weighed a fighter down and made him a slower target. Still, he felt that he could have worn another layer of quilt under his helmet, or doubled up the chain mail under his surcoat. “Youth and strength will be your advantage,” Rannulf had asserted.

  Othon rocked into his charge. For the moment Pigmeo was much more eager to fight than Edmund. It was not the first time the young knight had marveled that so many horses loved combat. Edmund did not need to urge the heavy mount forward. Pigmeo plunged, grunting with effort and enthusiasm as Othon’s plumed helmet grew closer. The big knight was upon Edmund, clods of sandy beach flying—and then he was past, neither man making contact with the other.

  The crowd thundered.

  Edmund was not encouraged—far from it. Othon was an experienced lancer, while the youthful knight was anything but a master with the weapon. Indeed, Othon’s lance had whistled past, not missing by more than a hand’s span, while Edmund had made only an awkward flourish with his own shaft.

  Again, from the new direction, Othon coursed down the beach toward Edmund, but this time the young knight was ready, his lance properly couched—nestled under his arm, the shaft steady. But then the sharp point dipped, as though compelled by its own will, the long, dangerous weapon aiming ever downward as Pigmeo rocked into a gallop. The lance fell even lower, and at last the point stabbed hard into the sandy beach.