Since there didn’t seem to be any good answer to this, I merely nodded gravely.
“If the dragon had killed you,” she said in great seriousness, “I would have always treated the shawl you gave me, such a short time earlier, as a sacred object.”
If the dragon had killed me, I thought, it probably would have gone on to kill everybody else, unless one of the knights had been able to get in a lucky spear thrust. In this case Maria, being dead, would not have been able to treat the silk shawl or anything else as a special object. But all I said was, “Don’t let the chaplain hear you referring to a simple shawl as sacred.”
She laughed as though this were a highly witty remark and went on to tell me how excited and how terrified she had been by the dragon. Since I had seen her then, I thought excitement rather than terror had been the dominant emotion on her part, but I was not at all unwilling to confess how terrified I had been myself.
By riding rapidly and taking the shortest rests possible, we were able to reach the duchess’s castle just before the early sunset of midwinter. Her constable and chaplain, the only members of her staff to stay at the castle over Christmas, had been warned we were coming and met us at the gate.
Our cook with her kitchen maids put together a quick supper, slowed down somewhat by her insistence that all the pans she found in the kitchen be packed up and the pans from Yurt unpacked and put in their places, before she could begin. Although every effort had been made to position the injured knights carefully in their litters, several were bleeding from wounds that had reopened during the ride, and Dominic was telling anyone who would listen that he was sure there were several fresh cracks in his ribs from the jostling.
But it was still a relief to be warm and snug in a castle without any damage done to it at all, and the next morning we all awoke more cheerful, in spite of a steady fall of sleet outside. Several of the younger ladies announced that they had been looking forward for months to a Christmas dance, and they intended to have one.
The morning was spent setting up the Christmas tree, rehanging it with all the ornaments, including my predecessor’s miniature magic lights, and putting up the rest of the decorations. The brass players had brought their instruments and could be heard practicing snatches of dance carols.
In the middle of the afternoon, the dancing began. The ladies had unpacked their brightest dresses, curled their hair, and perfumed their shoulders. The unwounded knights were dressed more uniformly, in the formal blue and white livery of Yurt, and all seemed to be enjoying themselves hugely. I sat in a little balcony above the great hall, watching and wondering when I might expect to receive an answer to my message.
In spite of the liveliness of the music, which had the other watchers tapping their toes and swaying their shoulders, I scarcely paid attention to the brightly-lit scene below. The best I could expect, I thought, was an answer from whoever was now count in the castle where the old wizard’s last apprentice had gone, and perhaps some indication of when that apprentice had left. But the records in another castle might not be as good as the records of the royal castle of Yurt, and, besides, the count might see no reason to pull out dusty ledgers to answer the letter of a wizard of whom he’d never heard.
Even if I received a detailed answer, I was not sure what it would tell me, other than that the apprentice had left there, which I thought I already knew. Two nights ago, finding him in the constable’s ledgers, I had thought I was well on the way to tracking down the mysterious stranger, but now I wasn’t sure what good it could do me to follow his movements before he became established in Yurt’s cellars.
In the first break in the dancing, while the dancers caught their breaths and the brass players shook the moisture from their instruments, the cook brought out punch and Christmas cookies. In the second break, however, they called for me.
“Come on down, Wizard!” called the young count, who had been leading the last set. “Show us some Christmas-time entertainments!”
Since this was asked almost politely, and he had suppressed any comments about entertainments being all wizards were suited for, I decided to oblige. For the most part, I made cascades of colored stars and a selection of red and green furry animals that scampered and played for a minute in the middle of the hall before disappearing with a pop. I also did a trick with two red balls, one real and one illusory, in which I mixed them up and made members of my audience guess which was which. Since they guessed wrong more than half the time, reaching out for what they thought was the real ball only to find that their hand passed right through it, this trick was considered a great success. To complete my entertainments, I made an illusory golden basket, piled high with colored fruit that shone like rubies and emeralds, and presented it to the Lady Maria.
She had been sitting by herself, not taking part in the dancing. Instead she smiled and nodded in an almost matronly manner, as though she were an old woman remembering the dances of her youth. Even when the old count tried to lead her out on the dance floor, she laughed and refused. When the dancing started again, I sat with her.
“Why don’t you ask one of the young ladies to dance?” she inquired.
“I’m still too bruised from the dragon,” I said, loud enough that the young ladies could hear me too. Since there was a shortage of men, I was worried about being pressed into service. “Besides, I’m just enjoying sitting here with you.”
I expected her to smile, as she normally did at all my gallant and meaningless sallies, but she was looking at the illusory basket I had given her, which was perched on the table beside her and was gradually fading. “Perhaps that’s what I’m like,” she said, but so softly I was fairly sure I was not supposed to overhear. As irritated as I had sometimes been at her fecklessness, I liked this even less.
Supper was announced after the next set of dances. As we were finishing eating, there was a clatter in the courtyard, and a group of people in disguises raced into the hall. “Good,” said the duchess. “It’s the mummers from the village. They must have heard I was back.”
There were about a dozen of them, all wearing ordinary working clothes that had been transformed by the application of beads and sequins, or by combining different items of clothes in unusual ways. Their faces were painted, and they wore foil crowns, unusual hats, and, in one case, goat’s horns.
They ran around the hall twice, gabbling and waving their arms. One of the girls was wearing a man’s tunic and was apparently intended to represent the duchess herself. At first she stepped out boldly, but then on the second pass around the hall she became shy and tried to conceal herself behind her companions. The duchess seemed to find it hilarious.
Then the men in foil crowns and enough beads and sequins to suggest kings came forward, challenged each other, blew shrill blasts on tin horns, and began giving each other great blows with wooden swords. Racing around them, prodding them into even fiercer action, was the man in the goat’s horns. He was dressed entirely in red, and I had trouble laughing and applauding after I realized he was supposed to represent a demon.
The wounded “kings” fell back from the fight and collapsed into the arms of the sequined women who were supposed to be the queens. The girl who had been wearing the man’s tunic now pulled on a white shift and a foil halo to come forward as an angel, whose touch caused the kings to jump up with a clapping of hands and race once again around the hall. All of us applauded and dropped a few coins in the chief king’s hat as he circled the tables.
“Now we’re starting to have a properly Merry Christmas,” said the duchess after the mummers had raced out. “Tomorrow, let’s celebrate the Feast of Fools!”
Good, I thought. A festival just for wizards like me.