"It's all right!" he said, beaming up at Angie and handing her back the empty cup. "It's absolutely all right. No hurry now. You tell me first—what was this good news you came charging in with?"
"You're sure you're all right?"
"I am now. You tell me."
"Little Robert's not sick at all!"
"Yes—yes. But about Geronde…"
"Geronde!" Angie shouted. She almost slammed down the empty teacup on the bedside table by her right hip, spun around and headed for the food and drink wardrobe. "Geronde's scar's gone! This is a celebration! I'm going to have a cup of tea, too! Do you want another?—No. Wine! Wine for me, anyway!"
She opened the door of the wardrobe. "How about you—now? Wine?"
"Yes, me too," he said, almost closing his eyes with happiness. Memory had come to his rescue just in time to keep him from pouring incorrect bad news all over Angie.
Blessed cup be hanged—blessed words were what fitted this moment. Carolinus' words when the Mage had been lecturing him on how he'd have to rest whether he liked it or not, because he couldn't do anything else about his sleeping. Jim took a quick mental glance at the passage in the tiny, shrunken tome within him that at normal size was too heavy to lift. Once he had had to cough it up to full size to consult it. Now he could read it with nobody else knowing what he was doing.
There the words were, just as Carolinus had quoted them: Magick accomplished is NOT reversible.
Hah! If the scar had vanished, no power on this earth, or any other, could bring it back. It was gone, destroyed, disintegrated forever.
He had been prepared to rain on Angie's happiness over Geronde's miracle, for no good reason. Of course! It burst on him now like the sudden rising of the sun after a black night. He had been right! Logic was back in its proper place. Neither Son Won Phon with his magick, nor he with his theory, had been wrong.
It had been Son's magick acting as a necessary trigger, no doubt. But after that it really had needed the Faith and Love—in that order—that had worked the actual miracle. Brian's vigil in the chapel, and all his and Geronde's years of yearning, were what had made the magick work. The happiest moment in both their lives. Their wedding night!
"They've loved each other so long!" Angie was saying, over by the wardrobe, pouring wine into two of the King's tall, forgotten, wine glasses, "and now this, to wind up a perfect wedding! She just woke up this morning, and it simply wasn't there! Can you imagine it—"
She broke off suddenly, looking wisely at him.
"But it was you who did it, wasn't it?" she said.
"No," he answered, happiness like a bright day inside him. "It wasn't me at all! It was Brian and Geronde. They did it."
"Brian and Geronde?" Angie echoed, standing by the wardrobe with the two filled glasses and staring at him.
"That's right," he told her. "By themselves. Bring the wine and join me, over here." She came with a filled glass in each hand. "That's right. Give me the glasses and I'll hold them while you go around the other side, so you can come and sit down next to me… fine. Now, here's your wine and I've got mine."
She looked at him narrowly, taking the glass from his hand, however.
"Comfortable?" he said. "All right, then. I'll tell you all about it."
So he did.
Historical Note
The marriage of Edward, Prince of Wales and heir to the English throne of Edward III, to Princess Joan of Kent, was one of the rare love matches among royal marriages, which were normally dictated by politics.
It completed a lifetime of affection, dating back to their having been children together at the court of Edward III, father of the Prince, and it was a marriage which had needed a papal dispensation to be possible—since the two were first cousins.
Joan, eventually to be called the Fair Maid of Kent, was born in 1328, daughter of Edmund Plantagenet, Earl of Kent; and by that birthright she would later become Countess of Kent. Sir Jean Froissart, the leading chronicler of the Hundred Year War between France and England, and of the fourteenth century in which all these people lived and died, would write of her as, "la plus belle dame de tout le roiaulme d'Engletterre, et la plus amoreuse…" ("the most beautiful lady in the kingdom of England and the most loving…").
The marriage to Edward was her third; the Prince had never married. Their wedding came when both were in their thirties, a late date for the first marriage of a Prince who was in line to be King. But the two were first cousins, and circumstances, as well as the Canon Law of the Church, had kept them apart until then.
Young Edward, called the Black Prince for no provable reason—perhaps because he wore a black jupon over his armor on some prominent occasion—never ascended to the throne of England. His father outlived him. But beginning with the chevauchee (invasion) of France that led to the English success at the Battle of Crecy, during which he was knighted though only fifteen, and until his death, he compiled a good record as a military commander.
Joan's first marriage came at twelve years of age. She married Thomas Holland a young professional soldier, in a secret, but legal, marriage per verba de praesenti as the Canon Law of the Church described it.
Holland left to fight at the sea battle of Sluys, and then went on to gain fame in the war against the Tartar invaders of Prussia. Meanwhile, Joan's relatives, now worried about her physical and mental growth, decided to marry her off to William Montague, who was eventually to become the Earl of Salisbury. Holland—now Sir Holland—on returning, confronted Montague—now Salisbury—and demanded the return of Joan to him. Salisbury refused.
Joan was a Plantagenet of royal blood, so any case brought to make Salisbury give her up had to be brought to the papal court, at that time located in Avignon, in southern France. The cost of such action was for a time beyond Holland's means—until, at the siege of Calais, he captured the French Count d'Eu, an aristocrat for whom the King of France would give Holland in ransom 89,000 florins.
Now well off, in 1349 Holland was able to get the papal authorities to issue a Papal Bull, a ruling that Joan was indeed his wife and must be yielded to him. The couple would be married for another ten years, and would have several more children before his death—Joan had already had other children fathered by both Holland and Salisbury.
Holland continued his distinguished military career, becoming one of the twenty-four knights that could be named to the Round Table, an English honor created by King Edward III and the Prince in imitation of the legendary table of King Arthur. The group would eventually come to be called the Order of the Garter.
Holland was eventually appointed captain general of all English positions in France and Normandy. But soon after that he died. A secret marriage by Joan to the Prince followed.
The King had been keeping other marriage plans in mind for his son and heir, and was angry on hearing of the secret marriage. But he relented enough to petition the Pope to free the Prince and Joan from the penalties of excommunication, to which their marriage as first cousins would otherwise condemn them, according to the Papal Canons.
Since the Papal Bull had ordained that Joan's marriage to Holland was the valid one, following his death the banns for her marriage to the Prince could be published, and a quiet, if official, wedding was held. Joan and the Prince would go on to have two sons. The younger became Richard II of England, his older brother having died by then.
The Prince himself died in 1376, of an infection contracted some years earlier during an expedition to Spain. Joan died in 1385. She had directed that her body be laid, not with that of the Prince, but with her first husband, Holland. As our history goes, however, her son by the Prince, Richard II, was later deposed by the usurper, Henry IV, and murdered. Moreover, another of her sons, John Holland, Duke of Exeter—along with her grandson, Thomas Holland, Duke of Surrey—was killed for opposing King Henry.
As Froissart would mention, regardless of the fact that she was the most beautiful and loving woman in England, all of Joan's immediate descen
dants were unlucky.
Gordon R. Dickson, The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
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