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Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
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The Dragon and the Fair Maid
of Kent by Gordon R. Dickson
Chapter One
Jim (Baron Sir James Eckert, Lord of Malencontri Castle and its environs, and
also now uppermost-level apprentice in Magick) woke two hours before
moonset, and rose from bed, going to the nearest of the Solar windows to look
out.
Behind him in their bed his wife, Angie (Lady Angela) slept peacefully. Beyond
the window it was still full night, but cloudless and moon-bright. From just
under the top of Malencontri's tower, where the Solar's large, single room was,
the full moon itself was still up, and everything far below him stood out clearly.
The tall trees beyond the cleared space surrounding the castle blended together
in an unbroken wall of blackness, the stubbled ground of the cleared space
showed a faint shine on its patches of grass, evidence that the night's rain had
stopped only recently.
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Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
As he watched, two figures, bent under the loads on their backs, came out of the
woods to his right and cut across the cleared space at an angle to enter the woods
again on its further side. They walked slowly, heavily, one figure taller than the
other, the large bundles riding high on their shoulders.
The prospect of dawn must have roused them, with its hope of sun to dry their
worn clothes—for clearly all they owned was carried on their shoulders now—
and put a little heat into their bones. So they had roused from whatever forest
nest they had made in the rain for the night and were once more moving on, to
what they did not know, but someplace better than this, and much better than
wherever they had left.
Standing before the six-inch squares of glass that made up the panes in the Solar
window, warmed by the blazing fireplace, refueled even while he and Angie
slept by the servant who, with a man-at-arms, was always on duty outside their
door, Jim felt a chill go through him.
They grew more numerous every day, these drifters. Running from news of the
bubonic plague, now in France—always traveling west, always so poor they did
not even have a donkey to carry their belongings, and with no real goal in sight—
driven on only by the instinct for survival. The chill deepened in Jim. There they
trudged, cold, undoubtedly hungry, if not starving. All doors were closed to them
out of a fear of the very sickness they fled from.
No community would take them in, for the same fear. Some member of the
Church might put out food for them, but otherwise could not help—probably
would not help. They had probably given up hope of aid, even from Heaven.
Faith and Love, those two great Pillars of Strength in the medieval world—
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Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
available to even the poorest—were almost surely lost to them by now. Faith,
that offered hope even beyond the grave, would have been drowned in the
animal effort to live. Love, in all its meanings of this time—love of wife,
children, comrades, community, and country—all the ways the word wove
together in the tapestry of medieval society, had once made the fabric of their
lives. All gone now.
What was left now was no more than the blind urge to run, and under that
instinct, they trudged mindlessly westward, ever westward, like cattle before the
driving, level snow in the fierce wind of a blizzard.
Jim remembered how he had lied about being a knight and a baron when he and
Angie—now his wife—came to this medieval world, a far different version of
the Earth into which he had been born and grown up. He stood here now, warm,
protected and fed as what he had claimed to be. It was true he had done what
was required of someone with the rank he had claimed. He had followed the
rules. He had fought with the proper weapons when necessary, according to the
customs here—not well, but well enough to get by. But his attempts to live had
been rewarded. Those two out there had not. There was no more fairness in this
time and place than there had been in the world of his twentieth-century birth.
The ones he watched might reach the sea eventually—it was not a great distance
from them now—and there would be nothing for them there, either. What would
they do then? Drown themselves like lemmings in their spring migration? There
seemed no sense or reason to their keeping on.
The chill was deep in him now, and he knew what had driven it there: the
question that had returned again and again to him the last two years of those few
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Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
he and Angie had spent in this historic period of a world almost exactly like the
one in which they had grown up.
Will Angie and I ever really belong here?
And even as he faced that question once again, Carolinus, his Master-in-Magick,
appeared beside him.
"Good! You're up!" he said. His red robe, like all his robes, was worn thin, and
would stay that way until, in a less absent-minded moment, he would recollect
the fact and make it clean and new again. "Jim, I've only a short time to tell you
something important."
"Shh!" said Jim. "Angie's asleep!"
"She will not wake while we talk," said Carolinus, "and, Jim, try practicing at
least a little proper respect to senior Magickians. You may need it soon. You
may now be in the last stage of apprenticeship, but you're not yet a fellow
member to a Magickian—let alone one like me. Must I remind you I'm not only
the most senior of Magickians, but one of the only three AAA+ Magickians in
the world?"
"Of course not," said Jim. "I never forget. But I thought we could drop formality
in private."
"Sometimes. Sometimes not! This is not one of those times. I come to you at this
hour in person, that no other Magickian might chance to overhear, and, by the
way, with a ward around us now through which nothing could be heard, to
privately give you information it is against the laws of the Collegiate of
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Gordon R. Dickson - The Dragon and the Fair Maid of Kent
Magickians for a member to share—two laws in particular I, myself, helped
write. It was I who woke you just now, I who then gave you some moments in
which to become fully awake, so that you would fully grasp the importance of
what I have to say."
"Sorry," said Jim. "But look, Carolinus, I was deep asleep just ten minutes ago,
and about to go back to it. Wouldn't you rather tell me in the morning—"
"Jim, listen to me! You must tell no one—not even Angie. There are things no
apprentice should ever be told beforehand. One is that his Master-in-Magick has
proposed him for full membership—until the Collegiate has agreed to consider
him. I'm telling you this now—and the other matter that brings me here—
because the problem is dire, and I believe I have seen in you a capacity no other
apprentice has ever shown."
"I see," said Jim, fully awake to the conversation now and at last impressed by
what Carolinus was telling him. He had never heard the elder magickian speak to
him with quite this much urgency before. "All right, if it's that serious I won't
even tell her—though we generally don't keep secrets from each other—"
"This is not your secret!"
Carolinus glared at Jim for a moment. He seemed to grow in stature.
"I understand," Jim said.
"Then engrave this thought in your mind. Whatever must be done to prevent it,
whatever it costs you, me or anyone else—the King must not die! The King must
not die!"
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