The Dragon, the Earl, and

by Gordon R. Dickson

  Balked of the fight it had wanted, it was still going to have something to say about what it would do; and as they stood there Angie walked up to them without her false mustache and nose and dressed once more in women's clothes, topped by the green travel cloak the wet nurse had borrowed to sneak down to Jim at dinner in the main hall.

  "I wore my costume over all this," she said, "and then took the other off in one of these little tents." She stared at them. "What's the matter?"

  Jim pointed at Mnrogar.

  "The Earl has not invited him over!" said Brian. "This is irregular—"

  "Irregular or not," said Jim, "I've got to get there before he does, or at least be there when he gets there, to hold him back by magic, if necessary in case he does something crazy. Carolinus should be taking care of that, but I don't know whether to count on him or not—"

  Suddenly realizing he was going about this the wrong way, Jim raised his voice to a shout.

  "Ned! Ned Dunster! Bring me that palfrey!"

  "I've got to go, too," said Brian. "There may be some who recognized me when I ran down the list with you just now. I must get back, come into the stands from the opposite side and pretend I've been around all the time—or at least confuse things so that no one will know."

  Ned Dunster showed up, leading the palfrey. Happily, it was still saddled and ready to go.

  "You can ride behind me," said Brian, beating Jim to the saddle and swinging up behind him.

  "I've got to go back, too!" said Angie.

  "Angela," said Brian, with a touch of exasperation in his voice, "this palfrey cannot carry the three of us! Besides, you cannot be seen riding so. It is not seemly."

  "The hell with that!" exploded Angie.

  There was a sudden, momentary awkward moment of general paralysis around her. Brian looked shocked.

  "What's the matter with you, Brian?" cried Angie. "Women swear around here all the time. Geronde swears. You've heard her often enough!"

  "But," Brian said, "not you, Angela. You—you—you are—"

  He stammered into silence.

  "That's right!" said Angie. "I'm not like the others, am I? I've got no children of my own. I haven't got a husband most of the time. I'm not even a female, as far as everybody around here is concerned—"

  Tears were starting to roll down her cheeks. Brian looked demoralized and paralyzed. Jim put out a hand toward her, but she knocked it away.

  "Don't comfort me!" she said. "I don't want comforting. I'm angry! I'm angry at all of you!"

  "And well you might be," said Brian, returning with a snap to his ordinary decisive self. He leaped down from the saddle to the ground and raised his voice. "Ho! Siward! To me, with Blanchard, immediately—saddled and bridled!

  "The hell with it, then—and I take the sin of your blasphemy upon my head along with mine, Angela," he said. "I will ride the war horse after all, go around left and you go around right, both of us through the trees; and I'll be there before you. In fact, Blanchard will even help. I can say I went to get him in hopes that the Earl would let me run a course with the Black Knight, after Sir Harimore had fallen."

  He put out an arm to stop Angie, who—after staring at him for a moment as he spoke—was now stepping forward to mount.

  "No, no, Angela," he said gently. "There are limits. James must take the saddle and you must ride behind him, holding to his waist; or the story of this will do you more harm than an army. I promise you that."

  Angie stopped, and stood aside. Jim stepped forward and lifted himself into the saddle, then reached down an arm for Angie. He had left the stirrup free of his toe, and she put her own toe into it and he swung her up with one arm, astraddle the horse behind him. The sidesaddle for women riders was yet to be invented; and riding without a saddle of some kind while sitting sideways on the back of a moving horse was inviting a fall. He felt her arm go around his waist.

  "Through the trees, then, and may you be in time," said Brian. He turned to look at one of the small tents farthest from the large one. "Siward!"

  "Coming, m'Lord," and a short, blue-eyed, flaxen-haired man-at-arms burst from between the smaller tents, leading a saddled and bridled Blanchard behind him.

  Brian ran lightly to the horse, vaulted into the saddle; and, at the touch of his hands on the reins, Blanchard rose on his hind hooves like a dancer, half pivoted in standing position to face the forest, and went off into it at a gallop, so that it almost seemed a single movement from the time Brian had started to run toward the war horse.

  Jim turned the palfrey's head toward the forest in the other direction; and in a moment, both he and Angie were in among the trees.

  This close to the Earl's castle, the space in among the larger trees had been cleared of fallen branches, bushes and brambles; the first, because dead wood on the ground was a perquisite of the serfs and tenants. Firewood could be cut only by order of the lord of the estate. The brambles and bushes had been cleared, partially by traffic in the normal course of events, and partially because the Earl and those of his household sometimes rode into the woods for some little distance simply on pleasure.

  As a result, they were able not so much to gallop, as canter, the palfrey. They made swift progress, accordingly, but still Jim found himself counting the seconds until they were beyond the stands, and had brought the palfrey up behind them, tethered him there, and walked normally out to join the rest of the crowd.

  They had made it in relatively short time, however, and as they turned the corner of the stands and walked down in front of it, they were in time to see that Mnrogar was now close to the far end of the stands. He had ceased kicking his mount and rode quietly while the boar-horse plodded along also quietly—ominously so, in both their cases, Jim thought. A troll two thousand years old would not be the sort to forget his fury once it had been kindled; and Jim had his doubts as to whether the boar would, either. But for the moment they looked silent and ominous, rather than potentially and actively dangerous.

  Jim and Angie made it to the stands and climbed up to where Geronde was still sitting, still holding space for them. Angie had had time to recover from her emotion and wipe her face with a cloth crunched in the snow until it was wet; and Geronde saw no sign of emotion, evidently, as they climbed up and Angie sat down next to her.

  Brian was already there, sitting on Geronde's other side, and his eyes met Jim's in a meaningful glance for a second, before Angie sat down next to Geronde. Geronde immediately began talking, telling her about how the jousting had looked from the stand. Geronde had, Jim inferred, been in on the fact that Angie was going to play helper to Jim in the matter of Mnrogar and the lists, for there was an air of conspiracy about her and she pointedly avoided asking Angie where she had been all this time.

  In any case, it was not their talk that concerned him, Jim thought, but whatever Carolinus might be saying to either the Earl or the Bishop—if it was the Bishop in that monk's outfit, of which he was pretty sure. The three of them were only about ten feet over and one seat-row lower than Jim; for the Earl was always given a seat right in the middle of the stands not only measured from end to end but from the first plank level to the top plank level.

  There was a steady chatter, low-voiced but continuous, throughout the crowd, as people there commented and speculated on the advance of the Black Knight toward the stands. As the boar-horse reached the corner of the stands at last, an inviting trumpet pealed out twice, belatedly, from below the Earl; and the voice of a herald boomed at him.

  "You may approach the noble and gracious Earl of Somerset and the royal Prince of England. Approach!"

  Mnrogar made no sound in reply, and as he began to pass the stands the chatter stopped, so that a line of silence moved through the crowd steadily but slowly.

  Slowly—because Mnrogar had literally reined his steed back to a lesser pace even than the boar-horse had been insisting on, and was watching all those in the stands as he passed.

  It would be more a careful search by nose to
sniff out the troll among them, Jim reminded himself. Outdoors here, with the breeze blowing from behind Mnrogar, he was evidently not able to pick up the scent of those not close to him.

  There was something strange and threatening about his slow progress, even though, with the helm over his head and his body immovably in the saddle, with only the eye slit facing toward all the people seated on the five ranks of seats in the stand. The expressionlessness of that armored body drew the silence along with him like an invisible veil of command over the crowd.

  Sitting high in the saddle of the huge black boar-horse, his eyes were on a level with those in the third row of the stands. As he approached the Earl the silence passed him by and began to spread ahead of him; until even before he reached that nobleman, all the people there were silent.

  "Smile at him, Hugo," said Carolinus, in barely above a whisper; but now, in the complete silence, Jim made out the words.

  In fact, the troll had little farther to go. He moved on until he was level with the Earl, then reined in his horse abruptly, staring and searching with the helmet slit among those there until it stopped, staring directly at the stands, at the middle plank of the stands, where the Earl and those with him sat.

  The Earl cleared his throat with a sound audible from one end of the stands to the other.

  "Sir—er, Black Knight," he said. "Much as it has pained us to see our good knights go down before your lance, we must give you due acknowledgment and praise for having won against all who came against you. However, as you yourself said, you were coming to join no tourney; and as the tourney was over in any case, you cannot be considered to have won it in any sense of the word. Nonetheless it has been an honor and an instruction to us to watch you in the lists."

  Mnrogar slowly reached up and took off his tilting helm. As his grim head and savage face were revealed, there was a strange change in the silence. It could not be any less without sound than it had been before; but in some indefinable way, it was as if everyone there had suddenly held their breath at once.

  "You!" said the Earl.

  But Mnrogar was not looking at him. Instead all his attention was directed to Agatha Falon sitting beside him.

  "Why, granddaughter," he said, "how do you come to be here?"

  "Seize him!" roared the Earl. And nearly seventy of his weaponed and armored men-at-arms ran to do his bidding.

  Chapter 39

  "Ring him in!" said the Earl.

  The day was still bright outside, with a cloudless sky, but the tower chamber of the castle they were now in had nothing but arrow slits to let in light; and as a result the interior was gloomy, in spite of the fact that cressets had been set alight on all three interior walls, and a fire blazed in the room's fireplace.

  But if the fire warmed anyone, it would have to be those few who sat directly in front of it, at what was—if unofficially so—a table of judges. The Earl sat at the table's exact center, with the young Prince to his right, looking uncomfortable. Beyond the Prince was the Bishop, in his customary dark academic robes, his gold pectoral cross glinting brightly against the black fabric; and his chaplain—the thin man in priest's clothing Jim had met at the high table the night the Bishop was absent.

  On the Earl's left side was Carolinus. Jim, Angie and Brian were seated on stools a short distance in front of the table and against the wall on the table's left. Agatha Falon was in a comfortably padded barrel chair against the wall opposite them.

  Agatha Falon looked entirely unconcerned. Jim and Angie sat close together, trying to put a good face on it, but secretly perturbed. Under the cover of her full skirt, Angie was holding Jim's hand. Brian, beside them, was looking grumpy.

  This would not normally have been the case, since he had won not only the armor and horses of his opponents, but the tournament as well.

  In fact, the tournament win had entitled him to a capful of gold pieces the King had sent down with the Prince for the winner. But he already had all these things; and what occupied his mind was what he had not had—a proper dinner. When it was time to eat, unless there was a crisis at hand, Brian needed to be fed.

  From his point of view, the dinner was far more important than what was going on here now.

  Of course, he had been allowed to start on something called a dinner. There had been wine and food in the fashion that had been set out during the previous eleven days of the Christmas season, but from Brian's point of view not enough of either; and not only that, but the ordinary conviviality of such a meal, particularly considering it was the last one of the Christmas season and they would all be parting, had been missing.

  To top it off, he had hardly gotten a few mouthfuls before his chance to eat had been cut short by the Earl ordering all here to hold this… it would have to be called a gathering, for the Earl had refused to call it a court… since Agatha was involved. As Earl, he had the legal right to hold a court; but now he clearly wanted as few witnesses and as little fanfare as possible.

  So Brian grumphed. Meanwhile, Jim suddenly had his mind on other things.

  When Angie had first taken Jim's hand, there had been other people talking in the room and he had been able to speak to her quietly under the cover of these.

  "What's the matter?" he had asked.

  "I don't know," she said in a low voice. "I'm worried. After all, we did help Mnrogar pretend to be a Black Knight."

  Curiously enough, this had not really been bothering Jim until then. But now he considered it. The only person there besides themselves who had known anything about the Black Knight was sitting at the table with the Earl.

  "Don't worry," Jim had said then to Angie. "Carolinus is the only one who could bring that up, and he won't."

  But can I be sure of that? Jim was asking himself.

  Angie had squeezed his hand; and he thought he had reassured her. But he now found himself continuing to be concerned himself about the present situation.

  It came back to him that he had been thinking sometimes lately that Carolinus was not necessarily whole-hearted; that the Master Magician might just be playing a game of his own and simply using them all. Jim had no doubt of Carolinus's very real affection for Angie and himself. But if Magickdom needed Carolinus, Carolinus must also need Magickdom. If there was a real danger of losing his own magical status, the Master Magician could almost not be blamed for throwing Jim and Angie to the wolves, to say nothing of tossing Brian as well; and this present situation might somehow make that necessary.

  Now, it occurred to Jim that there had been almost too many things going wrong at once. Perhaps there was a larger, hidden problem behind all the visible ones.

  But how to find it, if so? Clearly, at the moment, the Earl, in addition to not liking Mnrogar anyhow, wanted to clear Agatha Falon's name of any association with trolls. Yet the surface evidence was strong that she might well be the troll in disguise that Mnrogar had been smelling among the guests. Strange, it had never occurred to any of them that the disguised troll might be female rather than male.

  Jim's mind was still searching for some cause, or root problem, from which all the others might have sprouted. "Look for the missing witness!" Sherlock Holmes had said…

  —Just then, Mnrogar was led in, clanking, loaded down with what looked like about a hundred pounds of iron, in the shape of chains and fetters. His strength seemed equal to its weight, however. He appeared to pay no more attention to the restraints than if they had been made of cloth rather than metal.

  He looked around at them all savagely, and the glitter in his eyes only softened for a moment when his gaze stopped briefly on Agatha. But then he looked back, straight ahead at the table and the Earl, and the two regarded each other with a concentration of enmity that ignored everybody else present.

  "Shut the door. Now!" said the Earl, to the room at large. "In this room are the only people who know anything about this troll, except the fact that he pretended to be a knight at today's tourney. Necessarily, what else is to be known about him must be k
ept a secret, for the good of this Earldom, for the good of the realm, for the good of Christendom. Therefore I swear you all to silence—"

  "Forgive me, my Lord Earl," said the thin priest next to the Bishop, leaning forward to speak to the nobleman, "but since this is not a court, you cannot swear us—"

  "Hush, hush, James!" said the Bishop, without looking at the other man—who quickly drew back his head and said no more.

  Jim was staring at the Bishop's priest with curiosity. Whatever or whoever changed the actual speech of this world into what sounded to him like modern English was, as he had noticed before, a very astute translator. Ordinary speech of all kinds came through as recognizably Modern English, only with a certain difference in emphasis and form, depending upon the speaker. But sometimes there were larger differences—as in the songs sung by the other guests at that earlier dinner when he had gotten drunk himself, and sung 'Good King Wenceslas.'

  The other lyrics then had come to his ears like the fourteenth-century London English of his university studies. On other occasions, tags of Latin had come through. Also, he had noticed in Ned Dunster's speech a trace of a rural accent he had heard when he had been visiting Somersetshire one summer back in the twentieth century.

  Now it seemed to him the priest with the Bishop was speaking in what came to Jim's ear very like a modern Oxbridge accent— that particular, academic, upper-class English accent which had gained its name from a combination of the names of the famous English universities—Oxford and Cambridge.

  "—Swear you all to silence!" the Earl was repeating, with a baleful glance in the general direction of the chaplain.