"I'm afraid it'll have to be only three days, Your Grace," said Angie. "There is no more time to visit before Lady Geronde's wedding, and perhaps James told you about the Bishop cleansing our Malencontri chapel just for this, and the attention of Holy Church upon the day set for the wedding."
The Prince looked at her briefly and as sourly as manners would allow. Pointedly, he continued to speak to Jim.
"Surely, under these circumstances…"
"I crave your pardon, Your Grace," said Jim, "but as my lady's just reminded you, we have no choice. We dare not disappoint Holy Church, no matter what the reason."
"Well, I suppose not. But a brave man deeply wounded, undoubtedly dying if—but of course you will have taken that into consideration, being the one who saved him from bleeding to death. But I must say it is awkward, damned awkward!"
He chewed on his lower lip and turned abruptly to the door.
"Well, if that is the way of it, there it is! I will see you at dinner—that is, unless the Countess prefers to eat in our room. So, give you good eve."
He went out of the door, closing it somewhat sharply behind him.
"Countess, hah!" said Angie. "He'll keep her in the room to work out some new solution for him, never mind what the rest of us want and deserve!"
"She can't be completely free of conscience about all these plots and things."
"She can where he's concerned. She'd turn the world upside down for him if she could, and never mind the people that'd fall off. I haven't had the time to tell you, but that was what Geronde and I were talking about when you came in after the fight. She feels the same way I do—that it was almost surely Joan that came up with the idea of the fight, hoping it would be Brian who was laid up, and we couldn't leave until he was fit to ride—some days anyway."
"I thought you liked Joan, even admired her," Jim said.
"I do. She's good-hearted and smart. Too smart for our own good, when it comes to a situation like this. Bet you a golden florin she has some new scheme by dawn tomorrow."
"Well, if she does," said Jim, determinedly, "I'll come up with something to settle our leaving once and for all. Come on, we're close enough to dinner time to go down now, and neither the Prince nor the Fair Maid are going to be able to make trouble for us with everybody else joining us at the High Table."
"Don't be too optimistic," said Angie as they went out the door. But then she put her arm through his and squeezed it. "I know you can get us out if you really want to."
He squeezed her arm back to reassure her.
"I wonder if Brian will be there, after this morning and the session with the King?" said Angie, passing the flask of clean water they had brought with them to Jim just before they entered Tiverton's Great Hall. "Even if he got a little rest, he must still be knocked out."
"He probably is," said Jim. "But he wouldn't miss dinner simply because of being tired, and in this case, he won't mind being congratulated any more than anyone else would. I'll bet you everyone else is already at table."
"The King, too?"
"There you have me, but I doubt it. He had first crack at Brian right after the encounter."
They went in, and there was indeed a crowd already at table. Among them were five well-dressed men—probably, Jim thought, top functionaries in the King's traveling household—whom Jim had not seen before, obviously gentlemen, and probably some of them also knights. They stood up at the sight of him—a sign they considered him of superior rank. No sign of Brian or Geronde yet.
About the only fault Jim could find with the gathering was that Dafydd was not at the High Table. Sir Harimore was there, once more as stiff as he had been since he had first set eyes on Joan. What appeared to be three squires sat at the top of the lengthwise right-hand table just below the High Table—one of them the one who had been kneeling over the fallen Verweather after the combat.
Jim and Angie were seated. None of the men stood for her, that particular politeness not having become a general custom yet, and the naming of the five to Jim took place—across from Jim there was Sir Mathew Stairbridge, the oldest, in his late thirties or early forties. Beside him in order were Sir Osborne Leeds, Sir William atte Bowe, Sir Tore de Main and Sir John Crait, all of whom addressed Jim as Mage and clearly had known in advance who their table companions were to be. They all also praised the magick skill with which Jim had saved Verweather from sure death.
"All in the day's duty," said Jim.
Wine was poured, appetizers served by the table servants. Jim took up his flask and uncapped it.
"I'm sure none of the gentlemen present will be offended if I water our wine with a particularly magicked water. I am obliged to drink it after an exercise of the high Art to which I am committed. Since my Lady is exposed as well to much of the magick I must work, I always give her some also."
The gentlemen all hastened to assure them that they were not in the least offended. The long-faced senior, Sir Mathew Stairbridge, however, had something more to say.
"Most humbly I crave your pardon and beg you to stop me if my question is impertinent, Mage—"
"Forgive me in my turn if I correct you, sir," said Jim. "I am not a Mage, though somewhat qualified in our Art. That address is for only the highest and best of we Magickians accepted by the Church. With your indulgence I prefer simply to be addressed as Sir James."
"By all means," said Sir Mathew. "I will then venture on my question, hoping you will stop me if I am impertinent. But I have never known, nor even heard before of a magickian who had a wife. Is it that—"
"It is easily explained," said Jim, interrupting for a second time. "I was married before I began my study of the Art."
"Of course! That never occurred to me. It is gentle of Your Magickianship—forgive me—Sir James, that you gave answer to my rude question. But perhaps, if you would be so kind, I might also ask—"
But Jim was spared any further grilling by the arrival of Brian and Geronde, Brian looking somewhat pale but otherwise the same as usual. This time everybody in the room stood, including Jim and Angela. The gentlemen at the High Table all had their mazers in their hand, and Jim hastily picked up his.
"Sir Brian," said Sir Mathew. "It is an honor to us all that such a warrior as yourself should dine with us. With your agreement, sir, may we drink to you and the lightning of your sword forever."
"Sirs, you honor me above my deserts," said Brian with his usual modesty, as he and Geronde mounted to the dais. "It was a mere engagement with blunted weapons, and nothing of which a knight should take more than passing notice."
"Still we would drink to you then for what you are, Sir Brian, not just for today. It is noised about that Sir Chandos has named you as one of the first swordsmen of England, and it would pleasure us to drink to you as a moment to remember and tell of to our children. If you do not object."
"Sir Chandos also honors me—far above my station or deserts." Brian's pale cheeks were faintly stained with pink. "But if it will pleasure you to drink, never let it be said that a Neville-Smythe stood between gentlemen and their wine."
Everyone at the High Table drank, as did, informally, those at the lower tables, who were also standing. Curiously however, Jim noted, none of the latter cheered or otherwise made a sound. At Malencontri there would have been a good deal of normally forbidden freelance cheering from among the lower tables—to be immediately and sternly repressed by the masters and mistresses of the various castle departments. These Tiverton servants were perhaps too well trained in some ways.
Meanwhile, at the High Table, the drinking included Angie, who had picked up her own mazer, and Geronde, who had been passed one by a servant.
They all sat down again. Brian and Geronde took their seats at the far end of the board. Clearly the empty near end had been left free for the Prince and the Fair Maid, who continued not to show up. This seating put Sir Harimore at Brian's left elbow, seated on the long dimension of the table but next to the end, and he did not hesitate to make use of
the closeness.
"Sir Brian," he said, "I must congratulate you on a plan of battle excellently planned and beautifully executed."
Jim could not be sure—one of the table candles was now between him and Brian—whether another touch of color came to Brian's cheeks. Praise from a respected fellow-expert always meant more than that from the less qualified.
"Oh", Brian said, "I had no particular plan to speak of. As for the execution, I only took advantage of an opportunity when it occurred."
Sir Harimore's eyes met his with a look that Jim interpreted as rather plainly saying, We two know better, don't we? But he did not pursue the subject.
"I am sure Sir Brian is correct," said Sir Mathew, frowning. "He fought as a knight should, thinking of nothing but his next sword-blow."
Sir Harimore turned his gaze on the tall knight with keen anticipation.
"Say you so, sir?" he said.
"I do indeed, sir," said Sir Mathew, heavily.
"An interesting division of opinion," said Sir Harimore. "Perhaps you and I, sir, might go further into its discussion after dinner, just the two of us, since it would not be fit to speak opinions simply between the two of us, when all are at table."
"Sir, I look forward to such a pleasant eventuality—"
Jim felt an explosion beginning to kindle in the air of the gathering. Hastily, to divert attention from it, he spoke up with the first thing he could think of that would attract the attention of the others.
"I now have a terrier bitch and a litter of her pups in my room," he informed the table.
It worked gratifyingly,
"In your chamber?" echoed Sir Mathew. "May I ask why, Mag—Sir James?"
"Oh, it was a stroke of luck and the kindness of Sir Brian," said Jim. "At present I'm busy putting my castle of Malencontri into preparation against the movement west of the plague now in London." He dived into the details of this preparation, getting all their attention and winding up with the usefulness of terriers as rat killers.
"… the only drawback to having these dogs under our noses, so to speak," he ended, "is that I begin to think they may have carried some fleas in from the kennels. You have been here at Tiverton longer than I, Sir Mathew. Have you noticed many fleas about?"
So addressed, Sir Mathew had no choice but to answer.
"Oh, one or two, now and then," he said, "Fleas are everywhere, as all know, but the great cleanliness and attention to duty of the staff here has kept Tiverton quite remarkably clean of all vermin."
"Fleas can never be escaped entirely," opined one of the other knights to whom Jim and Angie had been introduced this evening for the first time.
"True," said Jim, and denizens of the kennels having been brought up, the talk among the men turned to hunting. Harimore and Sir Mathew found themselves agreeing strongly on one point connected with this, and both knights smiled agreeably at each other. Angie and Geronde, separated from each other by three male bodies, each eager to have their say in the hunting discussion, a topic where every man had a different opinion, looked at each other in eloquent silence. But when the first of the main dinner dishes began to make their arrival, the matter died as all started taking the first edge off their appetite.
When talk began to revive again, it had broken up into a number of separate conversations between people sitting next to each other. Geronde and Angie, even with a little distance between them, began a discussion on the subject of keeping a castle in a constant state of readiness for the unexpected, and the men between them were listening with not only politeness, but also a tinge of respect, as Angie was the wife of a Magickian, and Geronde the wife-to-be of the day's victor.
At the end of the table, Brian and Sir Harimore had now fallen into a highly professional conversation concerning how to balance the need for stouter harness on a destrier (that would not break on the coming together of their riders in tournament) against the fact that such harness might lessen the agility of the animal just when it was most needed.
Only, from time to time, Jim noticed Harimore casting eager, but disappointed, glances in the direction of the stairs down which the Fair Maid and the Prince would be coming if they decided to join the dinner after all.
But by the end of the dinner neither had appeared. As the gathering began to break up and everyone stood, Geronde and Angie moved closer to each other at last. Geronde whispered to Angie.
"Brian must to bed again. This dinner was hard on him on top of his strivings of this morning. I'll come to your room as soon as I can after he is full asleep, and I will bring Danielle and the Countess. It is she we must set straight on the matter of our leaving, day after tomorrow."
"You're right," said Angie. "See you then."
Geronde returned to Brian, whom she had left only briefly, and steered him off toward the stairs.
"What's all this confab about with the four of you?" Jim asked Angie as soon as they were well out of the hearing of everyone else and climbing the stairs themselves.
"Oh, just a sort of small war party amongst the lot of us," said Angie. "Nothing you need to worry about—just to get across to Joan the absolute necessity of our getting back to Malencontri as planned. Joan's the one who gives young Edward his ideas. All she has to do is stop doing it, at least as far as it involves keeping us here."
"That sounds kind of serious."
"Don't bother about it, as I said. Just talk. No danger of Geronde going after her with a boar spear."
It was notorious that a boar spear—with its cross-piece to keep the boar from madly hurling himself up the shaft of the spear penetrating him, to savage the man holding it—was Geronde's favorite personal weapon. In fact, Jim recalled, it had been with one such she had threatened him the first time she had met him in his dragon body.
"Hm," Jim said, a sense of foreboding still lingering.
They reached their room, and once in it, Jim stripped off the cote-hardie with a sigh and rolled up his sleeve. About to scratch in relief, he checked and stared at three very obvious flea bites. Angie was the first to speak.
"Jim! I thought you warded us all who came here against fleas!"
"I did!" said Jim stupefied, staring at his arm. Nothing warded against could get through that ward—all the magic he had learned reeled around him. If wards could fail—
"I know you did. I heard you do it."
"That's right!"
"Unless…" said Angie, thoughtfully, "you forgot to ward yourself. I don't remember you doing that."
Jim thought wildly back to the moment of his warding. He and Angie had just come back from a first session with the King—
"Maybe you're right," he said unhappily. "I remember warding you first, then everybody else—by God, maybe I did forget myself!"
Suddenly coming out of searching his memory, he magically erased the bites. Aware of a certain tension in Angie, he said cheerfully, "they're only wounds, after all, and getting rid of those is my most-used magick. You were right. I did forget to protect myself. But no harm done."
"I certainly hope so," said Angie, sounding—and looking—anything but reassured. "As I remember it, when a plague-infected flea bites and sucks out blood, it also regurgitates some of the plague virus—and that's how the bite victim gets infected. I'd be a lot happier… oh, why didn't I let you scratch when you wanted to, earlier? We'd have found it was bites, then—and maybe even caught the flea in action! That way, when you magicked the bites away, anything he'd regurgitated into the wounds would've gone with the wounds themselves—the magick does that, doesn't it?"
"Absolutely!" said Jim. "All foreign substances, as long as you get them before the body takes them up, one way or another. Anyway, there's no reason for thinking that simply because there's fleas here, any of them are carrying the plague. The plague's in London, the last we heard—remember? That's a long ways off, and nobody here at Tiverton has shown any signs of having it. Fleas are everywhere, as Sir Mathew, or one of the others we met at dinner said. No, any idea the flea o
r fleas that bit me were carrying the infection is nonsense!"
Angie looked at least partially convinced.
But Jim's own heart sank a little. He had first noticed that itching the night before, but had ignored it, as he was already halfway into sleep. Once an infection had left the original site and was free in his body, as he had just told Angie, the part of the magick that cleaned out foreign matter would not have been able to touch it. A wound would have become a sickness.
But, then, even if by some wild chance he had been infected, it would still not help to tell Angie about the itching of the previous night. It would only make permanent her worry about it. No, telling wouldn't change anything.
Chapter Twenty-Two
It seemed like no time at all before there came the voice of the man-at-arms on duty at the door, announcing "The Countess Joan, the Lady Geronde, the—"
"Yes, yes!" called back Angie. "They're all welcome!"
Three woman came in, including Danielle, led by Joan, looking not the least uncomfortable or annoyed to find herself one of a company that included an archer's wife.
"Good afternoon, Sir James," they all told him, cheerfully enough, but he could take a hint as well as the next man.
He cleared his throat.
"Good afternoon, ladies," he said. "Angie, I want to talk to that Kennel Master who supplied Brian with these puppies—and incidentally, find out what the carpenter's done with the pen we ordered. So if you all will excuse me…"
Expressions of regret on losing him, and he was out the door.
"I take it," he said, to both the man-at-arms and the waiting on-duty servant, "both the Kennel Master and the carpenter are to be found in the main courtyard?"
"Oh yes, my lord," they answered.
He headed for the stairs. He had no real interest in the Kennel Master, but he was definitely interested in why the pen had not shown up. One ordered at Malencontri would have been there, finished, within a couple of hours of the order being given—and the staff at Malencontri made no pretense of being the well-oiled human machine that those here had the reputation of being.
The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent Page 22