"I see."
"Yes. So everything's taken care of. I'm doing all our packing, except for putting it on the sumpter horse. All you'd need for a visit like that—being male—is one suit of clothes for the three days, but I'm giving you two to impress the King. Kings, from what Joan tells me, are very much like banks up in our own time, who only want to lend you money if you've already got lots of it—kings like to give things to people who already have things. There! Now, let's get ready for dinner—it's almost time."
Dinner was less formal than usual. Geronde was not there, and had food sent up to the room she shared with Brian. Everyone else made a short meal of it, having things they wanted to get done before tomorrow morning. Since Joan had been traveling with little baggage, in her squire disguise, Angie was lending her a couple of robes—she and Angie were much the same size—and they had to be refitted. The Prince had been supposed to bring a suitable dress from Tiverton but had failed to do so. Also as usual, in his open-handed improvident way, he was flat broke.
"If I've ever needed fresh clothes—" Joan reported him to Angie as saying in the privacy of their room.
"As you always do," said Joan.
"—I can pick out any courtier at court my size and say 'I like what you're wearing. I wish I had something just like that,'—and so, of course, we'd trade clothes."
"But," Joan went on to Angie, "I can hardly say that to a lady without looking ridiculous."
Jim spent the afternoon telling Master Carpenter how he wanted the pavilion set up in the courtyard, and Mistress Plyseth how he preferred the Nursing Room to be handled. He was listened to, promised everything—and went away knowing he would get only what they chose to give him of it. He also had a longer and much more satisfying interview with John Steward, his chief servant, who promised to keep everybody working at full speed, and could be trusted to do so.
Supper was quiet, rather exhausted on everybody's part, breakfast the following dawn a chaotic affair utilizing the table dormant—and they were ready to go.
After the early breakfast, the Prince took formal farewell of Jim and Angie, then galloped off to get his head start on the rest of them. They finally got on the road themselves. The day warmed as the sun came out, and Jim found Joan had chosen to ride with him at the head of the cavalcade.
"I would wish to be sure, Sir James," she said, "that you know how I appreciate your making this trip at such a busy time. It is a great kindness for Prince Edward and me."
"There're benefits in it for the rest of us, as well, my Lady Countess," he said. "We don't get to meet the King every day."
"It is no great thing, meeting kings," she said. "The sweat they stink of is very like that of other men. But pray, Sir James, may I simply address you as James—seeing you are an old friend to Edward, and I have come to love and speak on first names with your wise and beautiful wife? She calls me Joan—as I beg you do, when we are not on our manners—and I call her simply Angela."
"It may take a little practice," said Jim. With the warmth of the sun and this easy beginning to conversation between them, he was beginning to relax. "Angie—Angela—has a high opinion of you, too. She said you were brilliant."
Joan laughed.
"Like a diamond?" she asked.
"No, no," said Jim. "Excuse me, I pray. Angie and I have this odd way of talking between ourselves—it was the way people talk where we come from. She meant your mind—your wits—were brilliant, and she wanted me to take advantage of this trip to talk to you."
Joan sobered suddenly.
"That was thoughtful of her, then, as well. For your ear I should say I found her a remarkable woman in many ways. Most wives never look past my face and body and want their husbands to have nothing to do with me."
"There's no one like Angie!"
Joan smiled.
"I see."
"See?" Jim looked at her, puzzled. "See what?"
"Just so. You are fortunate to have such a wife, James. Few marriages are that happy. The Lord knows mine were not, and I have had two of them—though the first one still touches my heart."
"Two?" said Jim, a little startled. His researches back in his original time had made him somewhat familiar with the story of the Fair Maid of Kent, but now he found himself staring at what looked like a fresh-faced adolescent girl, riding beside him… But then, he reminded himself, in this time people lived early, and died early and suddenly. "Sorry. I didn't mean to pry."
"Pry? Heavens, no! You do not know my story? I thought the whole world knew it. The name of my first husband was Holland, and for me the sun moved from dawn to dusk at his command. He was a soldier—still is. I was twelve when we were married—quite legally, but secretly. But then, the family which had me to ward began to worry that I was growing and acting like a grown woman too fast and made haste to get me safely married off."
Jim shook his head wordlessly. Nothing came to his mind to say to this.
"Holland was in the east at the time, fighting the heathens, and I was still very young. I knew the King would have gone into a rage at my marrying anyone without his permission. I said nothing about the earlier marriage and let myself be married to Salisbury. He is not bad. He puts up with whatever I choose to do—as long as it is not too public—but I do not love him. Under Church law, Holland could recover me, because my marriage to him is legal and obvious—that makes the one to Salisbury illegal. But because I am royal, the ruling for that must come from the Pope—an expensive process. Holland does not have the money, and no chance of getting it short of a capture that will bring him a rich ransom. So now you have it all."
"But there's Edward," Jim found himself saying—not the sort of interjection that would normally have come from him, but the flood of such an open confession from Joan had overwhelmed like a tidal wave his usual sensitivity about other people's affairs.
"Ah, yes," said Joan. "But Edward—my Edward, young Edward—is an entirely different matter. We grew up together at court, and I have loved him all my life. There are the makings of a great King there, and if I can protect him until he becomes one, nothing will stand in his way. I have only my looks and wits to go by, but you would be surprised at what can be worked by them—Angela probably would not."
"Probably," said Jim humbly.
She laughed again, that open, free laugh of hers.
"Do not carry modesty to the edge of foolishness," she said. "Few good men will admit how good they are—few believe they are as good as they are. A great thing, by Saint Peter. But do not let it lead you into overmodesty and error. I think you are good for young Edward, you, and Sir Brian and the archer with the name I cannot pronounce. It reminds a Prince there are those in the world who are not venal, avaricious or selfish. You three are like a breath of fresh air to him. You keep your vows."
All but swept away by Joan's frankness, Jim was on the verge of telling her he had never taken any vows—knightly or otherwise. He checked himself in time—there was nothing to be gained by mentioning the fact, and, in fact, it would surely cause trouble later on. But the impulse had been there. One life-story frankly told begets another.
"What do you plan—" he began, but this time his sense of caution had no trouble stopping him.
"At Tiverton? I must reestablish myself with old Edward. This is what I had been aiming at all along, but had to wait for a moment when Cumberland was out of the way. He is not short of wits, himself, my Lord Earl. He would only have to see me on good terms with old Edward to know what I was there for, and to take measures against me. He is rich and powerful enough to put serious pressure on Salisbury to keep me away from both Edwards. To gain the results I want, I must be with both in person. Letters will not do."
A poignant flash of memory out of his days as a graduate student came back to Jim. In the history of the world he and Angie had been born into, this woman now riding beside him had, in her old later life, written to one of her sons by Edward—a son who by that time had become King Richard III—begging him t
o spare the life of his half-brother, a son of Joan's by Holland, who was under sentence of death. Richard had ignored the letter and gone on with the beheading.
Was that same thing to take place in this parallel world? The execution was said to have hastened Joan's death. Middle-aged, widowed, and heartbroken—it was painful to think of this as the future of the vibrant young woman who was riding so surely and hopefully into that same future beside him now.
He shut out the possibility. Here, as at home, there was no predicting the future.
"Have you any idea what Tiverton's like?" he asked her. "And what we might expect when we get there?"
"I know nothing of the castle, itself—its stairs and rooms," she answered cheerfully. "But because the King is in residence, I can tell you about everything else."
"Everything else is exactly what I want to know," said Jim. "I'm more concerned with our getting away at the end of three days than anything else."
"I will help you make that escape," she said. "But to tell you about the rest, the manners and customs particular to the court—"
"It's more the layout of the castle, where everyone is, or will be, that I'm after."
"To be sure. But the manners and customs may also prove useful, my Lord Baron."
There was an infinitesimal moment in which Jim realized he had been subtly rebuked for interrupting a Countess.
"Of course!" he said hurriedly. "I didn't think. I should have realized that what you had to tell me on these court customs is absolutely necessary to everything, but the layout of Tiverton may also have everything to do with our getting away when the time comes. I forgot for the moment you'd be staying."
"Hopefully," she said. "And I'm properly reminded, James, that I, myself, am if anything much more so ignorant of the manners and customs of your homeland. May I make amends by telling you about what you call the 'layout' of Tiverton first, after all?"
"Whichever you prefer," said Jim, as gallantly as he could.
"Well. Then layout it shall be. As I say, I have never seen the castle myself, but I know that it was built this century and is said to have a magnificent gatehouse—but I have talked with several of the Courtnays who owned it. That is the family that built not only Tiverton, but Bickleigh and Powderhame in Devon, all in this same hundred years. However, on the matter of Tiverton, in most ways it is very like your Malencontri…"
"Good," said Jim.
"The King, of course, will have been given the best and most secure and private rooms in the castle for his personal use. In this case, that means, as at Malencontri, probably the top floor of its tower—like your Solar—but more likely divided into a number of smaller rooms than your large one—some not much bigger than the small one you divided off for Robert Falon's nursery. The King's guests will be on the floors just below him—again just as you do at Malencontri; to make room, he will simply dispossess anyone already in a room he wants."
"We don't do that at Malencontri," said Jim. "Of course we might have to ask someone if they wished to vacate a room, and they always do."
"Of course. To someone of older blood or superior rank it is only courtesie…"
Between the layout, and the manners and courtesies, the two of them talked away the rest of the trip, and when they finally rode into Tiverton's interior courtyard, it was plain that the Prince's announcement had found no change of the royal mind. Smiling stablehands helped them off their horses, and smiling servants escorted them to their rooms.
Curiously, Jim could feel Hob—sword and all—shivering under the back of his shirt, but he had no time to find out what was bothering the little hobgoblin now. The Prince was knocking at his door, and walked in without even waiting for an invitation to enter.
"My father will see you right away—cannot wait to see you," he said. "You are commanded to his presence immediately, and never mind the travel stains. Damn it, come on, James!"
Chapter Seventeen
Angie was just completing her curtsy to the King when Joan and the Prince entered behind her. Jim stepped forward as Angie moved aside to give him room and essayed the deepest and most respectful bow he had ever made. It was more tricky than he had imagined before he had begun to practice it—for one thing, it was easy to lose your balance on a very deep bow—unless you did it just right.
But he managed correctly this time and came erect again to find himself looking into the King's face, a heavily bearded face with more white than blond hairs in it now, and above the beard a pair of the blue Plantagenet eyes with almost invisible white eyebrows, and white hair that had retreated considerably from its original frontier.
The King did not look in the least untidy in his dark red robe, though his reputation had him often so.
"Ha! My paladin!" he said, his blue eyes staring almost hungrily at Jim. "At last you come to me!"
"I have hoped for this day, Your Majesty," said Jim. Already I'm talking like a courtier, he told himself "Then why did you not come sooner?"
"I did not want to intrude without an invitation, Your Majesty," said Jim, thinking at emergency speed. Courtesie—always courtesie.
"Why did I never get him commanded to me before this?" The King turned his stare on the Prince.
"You were going to once of which I have knowledge, Your Majesty," answered his son. "But I believe the Earl of Cumberland pointed out to you that your time was about to be taken by Parlement, and a later moment might prove better."
"Hum," said the King, pulling at the beard on his chin, "you are probably right, Edward, though I could swear there was another time also I thought of calling him, and there was no great mass of duties to interfere. But somehow… however, he is here now, with his three great companions."
"—And high time it is," the King continued, speaking now to Jim. "There has been much I wished to ask you. How I wished I, myself, had been with you there!"
There could be only one place, of course: the Loathly Tower of Jim's first ballad-material adventure when he and Angie had first inadvertently come to this world. Jim was about to say diplomatically that it would hardly have been worth the time of a King, when he realized he had heard an odd, wistful note in the King's last words—and he realized suddenly that the other man was literally hungry for what he could no longer possibly have: the martial life of his younger years, the life he, as all others of the upper classes, had been brought up to love.
"I wish you had, too, Your Majesty," said Jim—it was an out-and-out lie. The already-aging monarch could have done nothing but get in the way. Even a magnificent swordsman like Brian had needed all day to kill the Worm, and what archer in this world but Dafydd could have held off the harpies, bursting without warning out of the low-lying clouds to swoop upon them?
And who but Carolinus, among all Magickians, would have been able to hold back those evil clouds from dropping even lower… it had been a dirty, not a glorious, day. A long, long, dirty day, striving to keep from being killed so you could kill the thing you fought with.
That was what the King had been wishing he had been a part of. In any modern world that wish would have seemed ridiculous. But then Jim remembered the very true story of the Thirty at the Oak, when the leader of the fifteen picked French knights had raised his voice desperately in the day's late hours:
"… I must drink, comrades!"
—and the answering voice from among his companions:
"Drink your own blood, Beaumanoiri"—followed by the cackle of laughter from the equally dry throats of those same staggering, exhausted companions.
Particularly, there had been nothing attractive in the fight at the Loathly Tower for Jim. He had gone though it himself only because he was determined to get Angie back, even if he died for it.
But here were these men of the martial class yearning for just such an encounter. He remembered young Sir Giles de Mer, confessing shyly to him, Brian, and Dafydd as they sat around a campfire, that he wished to accomplish one great deed before the moment of his death. Barely old enough to gr
ow the luxuriant blond mustache he sported—and his dream had been of a glorious death.
—And this aging shell of a man Jim faced now, so honored and powerful, obviously shared a dream of the same kind, and still clung to it, in the form of that largely fictional part of a ballad that Jim was here now to certify, to make it even more real.
But now the King was speaking to Angie.
"Will you sit, Mistress? You will no doubt be kind enough—" He broke off. "What's that?"
The Prince, who had moved to stand close beside the King's heavily padded chair, was now whispering in his ear.
"But I never made him a Baron!" said the King, quite out loud. "Oh—you mean he was when he came to England."
He turned back to Angie, who had taken advantage of the invitation to occupy something that was more like a small stool with a scant back—Jim was still standing.
"You will forgive us, my Lady of Riveroak and Malencontri, for miscalling you out of your proper address," he said. "We also rest in the assurance that you will show us the indulgence for which your gentle sex has ever been noted, if we talk about arms and battles as men so often do."
This speech having been rattled off with the speed and assurance of long habit, clearly conveyed the information, which Angie could have no doubt of, that she had been properly apologized to, King-style, for having been called a mere Mistress, instead of a "Lady," as the wives of even minor nobles were entitled to be called. Further, she was notified that her presence here was that of a reference piece—the classic heroine needing rescuing—and that comments from her were not required.
"Certainly, Your Majesty," she answered agreeably.
The King turned back to Jim. "Sir James, one of the duties of a knight is the destruction of anything evil. Why did you think it necessary to write me for permission to attack the Loathly Tower?"
Since Jim never had done so—outside of the verses of the ballad-makers—he was caught unaware by this question. Clearly, he was now to endorse the fiction.